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Karma Yoga 



VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY 

EIGHT LECTURES 

BY THE 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

ON 

KARMA YOGA 

(THE SECRET OF WORK) 



Delivered under the Auspices of the Vedanta Society 



SECOND EDITION 



NEW YORK 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

5 and 7 East Sixteenth Street 
1901 



U 



Library of ConqrQsa 

Iwo Copies Received 
JAN 24 1901 

f» Copyright «ntry 

SECOND COPY 



VfTl 






Copyright, 1896, 

BY 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 



Copyright, 1901, 

BY 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 



ROBBKT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK. 



Preface to Second Edition 

The word Karma is fully explained in 
the text of this book, but possibly it may 
not be out of place to give a brief idea of 
what is meant by Yoga. This word, which 
sounds strange to Western ears, is never- 
theless an old friend in a foreign dress. Its 
literal meaning is '' To join," and it has the 
same root (Ytig) behind it as our own fa- 
miliar word '' yoke." When Yoga is used 
technically, it signifies union of the human 
with the Divine, and the particular name 
given to that union (or Yoga) stands for 
the method by which it is attained. Hence, 
Karma Yoga means the endeavor to reach 
Divine realization through unselfish work. 

Karma Yoga might be called " applied 
ethics " in the highest sense, rather than a 
merely theoretical system. This book is in- 
tended to give an insight into the manner 
of so performing the inevitable tasks of 
daily life as to lift our lives out of the re- 
gion of the humdrum and the common- 

7 



Preface to Second Edition 

place and make them pathways to the 
loftiest heights of spiritual realization. It 
presents its own solution of the eternal 
problem how we, too, '' can make our lives 
sublime," and gives an upHft to human en- 
deavor on even the humblest planes. 

Karma Yoga proclaims the dignity of la- 
bor in a way peculiarly its own, and has 
words of help and encouragement for all 
grades of toilers in the world's great work- 
shop. 

To those who imagine that Vedanta 
teaches but one road to salvation, this book 
will be a revelation. Its language is un- 
mistakable when it asserts over and over 
again that same height of spiritual realiza- 
tion that is reached by him who gives up 
the world, is also attained by him who 
knows how to live in the world and be not 
of it. 

Karma Yoga admits the necessity of 
work, but shows us how to be free from its 
bondage, how to work as masters, not as 
slaves. We can so transmute our com- 
monest actions into spiritual treasure, as to 
glorify existence and make it a gateway to 
Paradise. 

The Editor. 

8 



Contents 
I. 

PAGH 

Karma in its Effect on Character ii 

II. 

<< Each is Great in his Own Place." 30 

III. 
The Secret of Work 53 

IV. 
What is Duty ? 73 

V. 

We Help Ourselves, not the World 88 

VI. 

Non-Attachment is Complete Self-Abnegation. 99 

VII. 
Freedom 124 

VEIL 

The Ideal of Karma Yoga 150 

9 



KARMA YOGA 



KARMA IN ITS EFFECT ON CHARACTER 

^ The word Karma is derived from the 
Sanskrit " Kri/' to do; everything that is 
done is Karma. Technically, this word 
also means the effects of actions. In con- 
nection with metaphysics it sometimes 
means the effects of which our past actions 
were the causes. But in Karma Yoga we 
have simply to do with the word '' Karma " 
as meaning work. The goal of all man- 
kind is knowledge; that is the one ideal 
placed before us by the Eastern philosophy. 
Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowl- 
edge. Pleasure and happiness come to an 

II 



Karma In its Effect on Character 

end. It is the mistake of mankind to sup- 
pose that pleasure is the goal; the cause 
of all the miseries we have in the world is 
that men foolishly think pleasu re to be the 
ideaL — After a time man finds that it is not 
happiness, but knowledge, towards which 
he is going, and that both pleasure and 
pain are great teachers, that he learns as 
much from evil as from good. As pleas- 
ure and pain pass before his soul they leave 
upon it different pictures, and the result of 
these combined impressions is what is 
called man's '' character." If you study the 
character of any man, what is it really but 
the tendencies, the sum total of the bent of 
his mind? You will find that misery and 
happiness were equal factors in the forma- 
tion of that character. Good and evil have 
an equal share in moulding character, and 
in some instances misery is a greater 
teacher than happiness. In studying the 

12 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

great characters that the world has pro- 
duced I dare say thait, in the vast majority 
of cases, it was misery that taught more 
than happiness; it was poverty that taught 
more than wealth; it was blows that 
brought out the inner fire, more than 
praise. 

Now this knowledge, again, is inherent 
in man; no knowledge comes from out- 
rf V side; it is all within. What we say a man 
/*^ \/^" knows," should, in strictly psychological 
/ ^ language, be a man ''discovers;" what a 
^ ^ man " learns " is really what a man " dis- 
covers," the word discover meaning " he 
takes the covering from his own soul," ^ 
which is a mine of infinite knowledge. We 
say Newton discovered gravitation. Was 
it sitting anywhere in a corner waiting for 
/him? It was in his own mind; the time 
came and he found it out. All knowledge 
that the world has ever received comes 

13 




Karma in its Effect on Character 

from the mind; the infinite library of the 
universe is in your own mind. The exter- 
nal world is simply the suggestion, the oc- 
casion, which sets you to study your own 
mind, but the object of your study is al- 
ways your own mind. The falling of an ap- 
ple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he 
studied his own mind; he rearranged all 
the previous links of his mind and discov- 
ered a new link among them, which we call 
the law of gravitation. It was not the ap- 
ple nor anything in the centre of the earth. 
All knowledge, secular or spiritual, is in the 
human mind. In many cases it is not dis- 
covered, but remains covered, and when 
the covering is being slowly taken off we 
say " we are learning," and the advance of 
knowledge is made by the advance of this 
process of uncovering. The man from 
whom this veil is being lifted is the more 
knowing man; the man upon whom it lies 

14 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

thick is ignorant, and the man from whom it 
has entirely gone is the all-knowing, the om- 
niscient. There have been omniscient men, 
and, I believe, will be yet, and that there 
will be myriads in the cycles to come. Like 
fire in a piece of flint, knowledge is existing 
in the mind; the suggestion is the friction 
that brings out that fire. ' So with all our 
actions — our tears and our smiles, our joys 
and our griefs, our weeping and our laugh- 
ter, our curses and our blessings, our 
praises and our blames — with every one of 
them we find, if we calmly study our own 
selves, that they have been brought out by 
so many blows. The result is what we are; 
all these blows taken together are called 
" Karma," work. Every mental and phy- 
sical blow that is given upon the soul to 
strike out the fire, to discover its own 
power and knowledge, is Karma, Karma 
being used in its universal sense; so we are 

15 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

doing Karma all the time. I am talking to 
you; that is Karma. You are listening; 
that is Karma. We breathe; that is Kar- 
ma. We walk; Karma. We talk; Karma. 
Everything we do, physical or mental, is 
Karma, and is leaving its marks upon us. 

There are certain works which are, as it 
were, the aggregate, the sum total, of a 
large number of small works. If we stand 
near the seashore and hear the waves dash- 
ing against the shingle we think it is such 
a great noise, and yet we know that one 
wave is really composed of millions and 
millions of minute waves; each one of these 
is making a noise, and yet we do not catch 
the sound of them; it is only when they be- 
come the big aggregate that we catch it. 
So every pulsation of the heart is making 
work; certain works we feel, and they be- 
come tangible to us; they are, at the same 

time, the aggregate of a number of small 

i6 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

works. If you really want to judge the 
character of a man look not at his great 
works. Every fool becomes a hero at one 
time or another. Watch a man do his most 
common actions; those are the things 
which will tell you the real character of a 
great man. Great occasions rouse even the 
lowest of human beings to greatness, but 
he is a really great man whose character is 
great always, the same wherever he be. i 
This Karma in its effect on character is 
the most tremendous power that man has 
to deal with. Man is a centre, as it were, 
and he is attracting all the powers of the 
universe towards himself, and in this centre 
is fusing them all and ejecting them again 
in a big current. That centre is the real 
man, the almighty, the omniscient, and he 
draws the whole universe towards him; 
good or bad, misery or happiness, all run- 
ning towards him, clinging round him, and 

17 




Karma in its Effect on Character 

out of them he fashions the tremendous 
power called character and throws it out- 
wards. As he has the power of drawing in 
anything, so he has the power of throwing 
it out. 

All the actions that we see in the world, 
all the movements in human society, all the 
works that we have around us, are simply 
the display of thought, the manifestation of 
the will of man. Machines or instruments, 
or cities, ships, men-of-war, everything is 
simply the manifestation of the will of man, 
and this will is made by character, and 
character is manufactured by Karma. As 
is Karma, so is the manifestation of the 
will. The tremendous willed men that the 
world has produced have all been tremen- 
dous workers — gigantic souls, with wide 
wills, powerful enough to overturn worlds; 
and they got that by persistent work, 

through ages and ages. Such a gigantic 

I8 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

will as that of a Buddha or a Jesus cannot 
be got in one life, for we know who their 
fathers were. It is not known that their 
fathers ever spoke a word for the good of 
mankind. MilHons and miUions of carpen- 
ters like Joseph have gone; millions are 
still living. Millions and millions of petty 
kings like Buddha's father have been in the 
world. If it is only a case of hereditary 
transmission, how do you account for this 
little petty prince, who was not, perhaps, 
obeyed by his own servants, producing this 
son, whom half a world worships? How do 
you account for this gap between the car- 
penter and his son, whom millions of hu- 
man beings regard as God? It cannot be 
accounted for by that theory. This gigan- 
tic will which Buddha threw over the 
world, which came out of Jesus, whence did 
it come? Whence came this accumulation 
of power? It must have been there through 

19 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

ages and ages, continually growing bigger 
and bigger, until it burst on society in a 
Buddha or a Jesus, and it rolls down even 
to the present day. 

And all this is determined by Karma, 
work. No one can get anything except he 
earns it; this is an eternal law; we may 
think it is not so, but in the long run we 
shall be convinced of it. A man may strug- 
gle all his life in becoming rich; he may 
cheat thousands, but he finds at last that 
he did not deserve it, and his life becomes 
a trouble and a nuisance to him. We may 
go on accumulating for our physical en- 
joyment, but only what we earn is ours. A 
fool may buy all the books in the world, 
but they will be in his library, and he will 
only be able to read those he deserves, and 
this deserving is produced by Karma. Our 
Karma determines what we deserve and 

what we can assimilate. We are responsible 

20 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

for what we are, and whatever we want our- 
selves to be we have the power to make 
ourselves. If what we are now has been 
made by our own past actions it certainly 
follows that whatever we want to be we 
can make ourselves by our present actions; 
so we have to know how to act. You will 
say, '' What is the use of learning how to 
work? Every one works in this world." 
But there is such a thing as frittering away 
our energies. With regard to this Karma 
Yoga, in the Bhagavad Gita it is said that 
Karma Yoga is doing work, but with clev- 
erness and as a science; knowing how to 
do work that will bring the greatest results. 
You must remember that all this work is 
simply to bring out the power of the mind 
which is already there, to wake up the soul. 
The power is inside every man, and the 
knowledge is there; these different works 

21 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

are like blows to bring it out, to cause this 
giant to wake up. 

A man works for various motives; there 
cannot be work without a motive. Some 
people want to get fame, and they work 
for fame. Others want to get money, and 
they work for money. Others want power, 
and they work for power. Others want to 
get to heaven, and they work to get to 
heaven. Others want to leave a name when 
they die, as they do in China, where no man 
gets a title until he is dead; that is a bet- 
ter way, after all. When a man does very 
good things they give a title of nobility to 
his father, who is dead, or to his grand- 
father. Some of the Mohammedan sects 
work all their lives to have a gigantic tomb 
when they die. I know sects among whom, 
as soon as a child is born, they begin to 
prepare for his tomb; that is the greatest 
work a man has to do, and the bigger and 

22 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

finer the tomb the better off the man is sup- 
posed to be. Others work as a penance; 
do all sorts of wicked things, then erect a 
temple, or give something to the priests to 
buy them off and give them a passport to 
heaven. They think that will clear them 
and that they will go scot-free. These are 
some of the various motives for work. 

Work for work's sake. There are a few 
who are really the salt of the earth in every 
country and who work for work's sake, 
who do not care for name, or fame, or to 
get to heaven. There are others who do 
good to the poor and help mankind from 
still higher motives, because it is good, and 
they love good. Desires for name and 
fame seldom bring immediate results; as a 
rule, they come to us when we are old and 
are done with life. If a man works with- 
out any selfish motive in view what be- 
comes of him? Does he not gain any- 

23 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

thing? Yes, he is the highest gainer. Un- 
selfishness pays more, only people have 
not the patience to practise it. It is more 
paying in physical value also. Love, and 
truth, and unselfishness are not only moral 
figures, but are the highest ideals, because 
they are such manifestations of power. In 
the first place, a man who can work for 
five days, or for five minutes, without any 
selfish motive whatever, without thinking 
of the future, or heaven, or punishment, or 
anything of the kind, becomes a giant. It 
is hard to do it, but in the heart of our 
hearts we know the value of it, and what 
good it brings. It is the greatest manifes- 
tation of power and a tremendous restraint; 
to restrain is a manifestation of more power 
than all outgoing action. A carriage with 
four horses may rush down a hill without 
restraint; or, the coachman may restrain 

the horses. Which is the greater manifes- 

24 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

tation of power, to let them go or to re- 
strain them? A cannon-ball flying through 
the air goes a long distance and then falls. 
Another is cut short in its flight by strik- 
ing against a wall, and intense heat is gen- 
erated. So, all this outgoing following a 
selfish motive, goes away; it will not re- 
turn to you, but if it be restrained it will 
develop. Restraint will produce a gigantic 
will, that character which makes a world 
move. Foolish men do not know the 
secret; they want to rule mankind. Man 
does not know that he can rule the whole 
world if he waits. Let him wait a few years, 
restrain that foolish idea of governing, and 
when that idea is wholly gone that man will 
be a power in the world. But we are such 
fools! The majority of us cannot see be- 
yond a few years, just as animals cannot see 
beyond a few steps. Just a little narrow cir- 
cle; that is our world. We have not the 

25 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

patience to look beyond and thus we be- 
come immoral and wicked. It is our weak- 
ness, our powerlessness. 

But the lowest sorts of work are not to 
be despised. Let a man who knows no 
better, work for selfish ends, for name and 
fame; but a man should always try to get 
towards the higher motive and to under- 
stand what that motive is. Krishna tells 
us in the Gita, " To work you have the 
right, but not to the fruits thereof.'' Leave 
the fruits alone, leave results alone. Why 
care for results? When wanting to help a 
man, never think what that man's attitude 
should be towards you. Do not care to 
understand. If you want to do a great or 
a good work, do not trouble to think what 
the results will be. 

There comes another difficult question 

with this sort of work. Intense activity is 

necessary; we must always work. We can- 

26 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

not live a minute without work. What be- 
comes of rest? Here is one side of Hfe- 
struggle work, to be whirled rapidly round 
in the current of social life. And here is 
another picture^ — calm, retiring, everything 
peaceful around you, very little of noise, 
only nature. Neither of them is a perfect 
picture. If a man goes to live in such 
a place as soon as he is brought in contact 
with the surging whirlpool of the world he 
will be crushed by it; just as the fish that 
lives in the deep sea water, as soon as it 
is brought to the surface, breaks into 
pieces; the weight of water on it had 
kept it together. Can a man who has been 
used to the turmoil and the rush of life live 
if he comes into a quiet place? He will 
suffer and perhaps lose his mind. Very 
few are able to bear entire solitude. The 
ideal man is he who in the midst of the 
greatest silence finds the intensest activity 

27 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

and in the midst of the intensest activity 
finds the silence of the desert. He has 
learned the secret of restraint; he has con- 
trolled himself. He goes through the 
streets of a big city, with all their traffic, 
and his mind is as calm as if he were in a 
cave, where not a sound could reach him. 
and he is working intensely all the time. 
That is the ideal of Karma Yoga, and if you 
have attained to that you have really 
learned the secret of work. 

But we have to begin from the begin- 
ning, to take up the works as they come 
to us and slowly make ourselves more un- 
selfish every day. We must do the work 
and find out the motive power that is be- 
hind, prompting us to the work, and, al- 
most without exception, in the first years, 
we will find that the motives are always 
selfish, but gradually this selfishness will 

melt, by persistence, and at last will come 

28 



Karma in its Effect on Character 

the time when we shall be able to do really- 
unselfish work. We all hope that some 
time or other, as we struggle through the 
path of life, there will come a time when we 
shall become perfectly unselfish, and the 
moment we attain to that, our powers will 
be concentrated, and the knowledge which 
is ours will become manifest. 



29 



II 



" EACH IS GREAT IN HIS OWN PLACE " 



According to the Sankhya philosophy, 
nature is composed of three materials, 
called, in Sanskrit, Sattva, Rajas and Ta- 
mas, Tamas is typified as darkness or in- 
activity; Rajas as activity, where each par- 
ticle is trying to fly off from the attracting 
centre, and Sattva is the equilibrium of the 
two, getting a control of both. Each man 
is composed of these three materials; in 
each of us we find that sometimes the Ta- 
mas prevails; we become lazy; we cannot 
move; we are inactive, bound down by cer- 
tain ideas. At other times activity will pre- 
vail, and at still other times that calm 
control of both will prevail — the Sattva. 

30 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

Again, in different men, one of these ma- 
terials is generally predominant. The char- 
acteristic of one man is that of inactivity, 
dullness and laziness; the characteristic of 
another man is activity, power, manifesta- 
tion of energy, and in still another man we 
find the sweetness, calmness, gentleness, 
which are controUing both. So in creation 
— in animals, plants and men — we find the 
typification of all these different materials. 

Karma Yoga has specially to deal with 
these three elements. By teaching us what 
they are and how to employ them it helps 
us to do our work better. Human society 
is a graded organization. We all know 
about morality, and we all know about 
duty, but at .the same time we find that in 
various countries morality differs greatly. 
What is regarded as moral in one country 
may in another be considered perfectly im- 
moral. Yet we have the idea that there 

31 



t( 



Each is Great in his Own Place 



must be a universal standard of morality. 
So it is with duty. The idea of duty varies 
much among different nations. Two ways 
are left open to us — the way of the ig- 
norant, who think that there is only one 
way to truth, and that all the rest are 
wrong, or the way of the wise, who admit 
that, according to the mental constitution 
or the different plane of existence in which 
we are, duty and morality may vary. The 
important thing is to know that there are 
gradations of duty and of morality — that 
what is the duty of one state of life in one 
set of circumstances will not be that of an- 
other. 

The following example will serve to il- 
lustrate: — All great teachers have taught 
" resist not evil " — that non-resisting evil 
is the highest ideal. We all know that if 
a certain number of us attempted to put 

that into practice the whole social fabric 

32 



" Each is Great in his Own Place *' 

would fall to pieces, society would be de- 
stro/ed, the wicked would have possession 
of our properties and our lives and would 
do whatever they liked with us. Even if 
only one day of such non-resistance were 
practised it would lead to the utter disso- 
lution of society. Yet, intuitively, in our 
heart of hearts we feel the truth of the 
teaching, " resist not evil.'' This seems to 
us to be the great ideal; yet to teach this 
doctrine only would be equivalent to con- 
demning a vast proportion of mankind. 
Not only so, it would be making men feel 
that they were always doing wrong, cause 
scruples of conscience in all their actions; 
it would weaken them, and that constant 
self-disapproval would breed more vice 
than any other weakness. To the man who 
has begun to hate himself the gate to de- 
generation has been opened, and so with a 
nation. Our first duty is not to hate our- 

33 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

selves; to advance we must have faith in 
ourselves first and then in God. He who 
has no faith in himself can never have faith 
in God. Therefore, the only alternative re- 
maining to us is to recognize that duty and 
morality vary under different circum- 
stances; not that the man who resists is do- 
ing something wrong, but that in the dif- 
ferent circumstances in which he is placed 
it may become his duty to resist. 

In reading the Bhagavad Gita many of 
you in Western countries may have felt 
astonished at the second chapter, when 
Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and a 
coward because of his refusal to fight or 
offer resistance on account of his adver- 
saries being his friends and relatives, mak- 
ing the plea that non-resistance was the 
highest ideal of love. The great lesson to 
learn is that the two extremes are alike; 
the extreme positive and the negative are 

34 



" Each is Great in his Own Place '" 

always similar; when the vibrations of light 

« 

are too slow we do not see them, nor do 
we see them when they are too rapid. So 
with sound; when very low we do not hear, 
when very high we do not hear. In Hke 
manner is the difference between resistance 
and non-resistance. One man does not re- 
sist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, 
and not because he will not; the other is 
the man who, knowing that he can strike 
an irresistible blow if he likes, not only does 
not strike, but blesses his enemies. ^ The 
one who resists not from weakness com- 
mits a sin, and as such will not receive any 
benefit from his non-resistance, while the 
other would commit a sin by offering re- 
sistance. Buddha gave up his throne and 
renounced his position; that was true re- 
nunciation; but there cannot be any ques- 
tion of renunciation in the case of a beggar 
who has nothing to renounce. So we must 

35 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

always take care, when we speak of this 
non-resistance and ideal love, what we 
really mean. We must first take care to 
understand whether we have the power of 
resistance or not. Then, having the power, 
if we renounce and do not resist, we are do- 
ing a grand act, but if we cannot resist and 
at the same time try to deceive ourselves 
that we are actuated by motives of the 
highest love we are doing the exact oppo- 
site. So Arjuna became a coward at the 
sight of the mighty array against him; his 
" love " made him forget his duty towards 
his country and king. That is why Krishna 
told him that he was a hypocrite: — " Thou 
talkest like a wise man, but thy actions be- 
tray thee to be a coward; therefore, stand 
up and fight! " 

Such is the idea of the Karma Yogi. 
The Karma Yogi is the man who under- 
stands that the highest ideal is non-re- 

36 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

sistance, but who also knows that this is 
the highest manifestation of power, and 
that what is called '' resisting evil " is but 
a step on the way towards the manifesta- 
tion of the highest power, which is non-re- 
sistance. Before having attained the high- 
est ideal his duty is to resist; let him work, 
let him fight, let him strike straight from 
the shoulder. Then only, when he has 
gained the power to resist, will non-re- 
sistance be a virtue. 

Inactivity should be avoided by all 
means. Activity always means resistance. 
Resist all evils, mental and physical, and 
when you have succeeded in resisting, then 
w ill calmness co nie. It is very easy to say, 
" hate not anybody, resist not any evil," 
but we know what that means. When the 
eyes of society are turned towards us we 
may make a show of non-resistance, but in 
our hearts it is canker all the time. We 

37 



T^ 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

feel the want of it; we feel that it would 
be better to resist. If you desire wealth 
and you know that the whole world will 
tell you that he who aims at wealth is a 
very wicked man, you, perhaps, do not 
dare to plunge into the struggle for wealth, 
yet at the same time the mind is running 
day and night after money. This is hypoc- 
risy and will serve no purpose. Plunge 
into the world, and then, after a time, when 
you have enjoyed all that is in it, will re- 
nunciation come; then will calmness come. 
So fulfil your desire for power and every- 
thing else, and after you have fulfilled the 
desire will come the time when you will 
know that these are very little things; un- 
til you have fulfilled this desire, until you 
have passed through that activity, it is im- 
possible for you to come to that state of 
calmness and serenity. These ideas of 
serenity have been preached for thousands 

38 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

of years; everybody born has heard them 
from childhood, and yet we see very few 
in the world that have really reached that 
stage. I do not know if I have seen twenty 
persons in my life who were really calm and 
non-resisting, and I have travelled over half 
tlie world. 

Every man should take up his own ideal 
and endeavor to accomplish it; that is a 
surer way than taking up other men's 
ideals, which he can never hope to accom- 
plish. For instance, we take a child and 
at once give him the task of walking 
twenty miles; either the little one dies or 
one in a thousand may crawl the twenty 
miles, to reach the end exhausted and half 
dead. That is what we generally try to do 
with the world. All men and women, in 
any society, are not of the same mind, or 
capacity, and have not the same power to 
understand things; they must have differ- 

39 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

ent ideals, and we have no right to sneer at 
any ideal. Let every one do the best he 
can for his own ideal. I should not be 
judged by yours or you by mine. The ap- 
ple tree should not be judged by the stand- 
ard of the oak nor the oak by that of the 
apple. To judge the apple tree you must 
take the apple standard and for the 
oak its own standard, and so with all 
of us. 

Unity in variety is the plan of creation. 
However men and women may vary indi- 
vidually, there is unity in the background. 
The different individual characters and 
classes of men and women are natural 
variations in the law of creation. Hence, 
we ought not to judge them by the same 
standard or put the same ideal before them. 
Such a course creates only an unnatural 
struggle, and the result is that man begins 

to hate himself and is hindered from be- 

40 



" Each is Great In his Own Place '' 

coming religious and good. Our duty is 
to encourage every one in his struggle to 
live up to his own highest ideal and strive 
to make this ideal as near as possible to the 
truth. In the Hindu morality we find that 
this fact has been recognized from very an- 
cient times, and in their Scriptures and 
books on ethics dififerent rules are laid 
down for the dififerent classes of men, for 
the householder, the Sannyasin (the man 
who has renounced the world) and the stu- 
dent. 

The life of every individual, according to 
the Hindu Scriptures, has its peculiar du- 
ties apart from what belongs to universal 
humanity; to each stage of life certain 
duties are attached by its own nature. No 
one of these stages of life is superior to the 
other; the life of the married man is quite 
as great as that of the man who is not mar- 
ried, but who has devoted himself to re- 

41 



(( 



Each is Great in his Own Place " 



ligious work. The king on his throne is 
as great and glorious as the scavenger in 
the street. Take him off his throne, make 
him do the work of the scavenger and see 
how he will fare. Take the scavenger and 
see how he will rule. It is useless to say 
that the man who lives out of the world is 
a greater man than he who lives in the 
world; it is much more difficult to live in 
the world and worship God than to give it 
up and live a free and easy life. The house- 
holder marries and carries on his duties as 
a citizen, while the duties of the man who 
gives up the world are to devote his ener- 
gies only to religion. If a man goes out 
of the world to worship God he must not 
think that those who live in the world and 
work for the good of the world are not 
worshipping God; neither must those who 
live in the world, for wife and children, 

think that those who give up the world are 

42 



" Each is Great in his Own Place '' 

low vagabonds. Each is great in his own 
place. 

This thought I will illustrate by a story. 
A certain king used to inquire of all the 
Sannyasins that came to his country, 
" Which is the greater man — he who gives 
up the world and becomes a Sannyasin, or 
he who lives in the world and performs his 
duties as a householder? " Many wise men 
sought to solve the problem. Some as- 
serted that the Sannyasin was greater, upon 
which the king demanded that they prove 
their assertion. When they could not he 
ordered them to marry and become house- 
holders. Then others came and said, " The 
householder who performs his duties is the 
greater man." Of them, too, the king de- 
manded proofs. When they could not give 
them he made them also settle down as 
householders. 

At last there came a young Sannyasin, 

43 



" Each is Great in his Own Place '' 

and the king inquired of him. He an- 
swered, '' Each, O king, is equally great 
in his place." '' Prove this to me," repHed 
the king. '' I will prove it to you," said the 
Sannyasin, " but you must first come and 
live as I do for a few days, that I may be 
able to prove to you what I say." The 
king consented and followed the Sannyasin 
out of his own territory and passed through 
many territories, until they came to another 
kingdom. In the capital of that kingdom 
a great ceremony was going on. The king 
and the Sannyasin heard the noise of 
drums, and music, and criers; the people 
were assembled in the streets in gala ar- 
ray, and a great proclamation was being 
made. The king and the Sannyasin stood 
there to see what was going on. The crier 
was saying that the princess, daughter of 
the king of that country, was about to 

44 



' Each is Great in his Own Place '\ 

choose a husband from among those as- 
sembled before her. 

It was an old custom in India for 
princesses to choose husbands in this way, 
and each one had certain ideas of the 
sort of man she wanted for a husband; 
some would have the handsomest man; 
others would have only the most learned; 
others would have the richest and so on. 
The princess, in the most splendid array, 
was carried on a throne, and the announce- 
ment was made by criers that the princess 
so-and-so was about to choose her hus- 
band. Then all the princes of the neigh- 
borhood put on their bravest attire and 
presented themselves before her. Some- 
times they, too, had criers to enumerate 
their advantages and the reasons why they 
hoped the princess would choose them. 
The princess was carried around and looked 
at them and heard what they had to offer, 

45 



n. 



Each is Great in his Own Place " 



and if she was not pleased she said to her 
bearers, '' Move on," and no more notice 
was taken of the rejected suitors. If, how- 
ever, the princess was pleased with any one 
of them she threw a garland upon him, and 
he became her husband. 

The princess of the country to which the 
king and the Sannyasin had come was hav- 
ing one of these ceremonies. She was the 
most beautiful princess in the world, and 
the husband of the princess would be ruler 
of the kingdom after her father's death. 
The idea of this princess was to marry the 
handsomest man, but she could not find 
the right one to please her. Several times 
these meetings had taken place, and yet 
the princess had not selected any one. This 
meeting was the most splendid of all; more 
people than ever had come to it, and it 
was a most gorgeous scene. The princess 

comes in on a throne, and the bearers carry 

46 



(6 



Each is Great in his Own Place " 



her from place to place. She does not care 
for any one, and every one becomes disap- 
pointed that this meeting also is to be 
broken up without any one being chosen. 
Just then comes a young man, a Sannya- 
sin, handsome as if the sun had come down 
to the earth, and he stands in one corner 
of the assembly, watching what is going on. 
The throne with the princess comes near 
him, and as soon as she sees the beautiful 
Sannyasin she stops and throws the gar- 
land over him. The young Sannyasin 
seizes the garland and throws it ofif, ex- 
claiming, '' What nonsense you mean by 
that; I am a Sannyasin. What is marriage 
to me? '' The king of that country thinks 
that perhaps this man is poor, so does not 
dare to marry the princess, so he said to 
him, " With my daughter goes half my 
kingdom now and the whole kingdom after 
my death! " and he puts the garland again 

47 



" Each is Great in his Own Place 

on the Sannyasin. The young man threw it 
ofif once more, saying, " What nonsense is 
this? I do not want to marry,'' and walked 
quickly away from the assembly. 

Now the princess had fallen so much in 
love with this young man that she said, '' I 
must marry this man or I shall die," and 
she went after him to bring him back. 
Then the other Sannyasin, who had 
brought the king there, said to the king, 
" King, let us follow this pair," so they 
walked after them, but a good distance be- 
hind. The young Sannyasin who had re- 
fused to marry the princess walked out into 
the country for several miles, when he came 
to a forest and struck into it, and the 
princess followed him, and the other two 
followed them. Now the young Sannya- 
sin was well acquainted with that forest and 
knew all the intricate passages in it, and 

suddenly he jumped into one of these and 

48 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

disappeared, and the princess could not dis- 
cover him. After trying for a long time to 
find him she sat down under a tree and 
began to weep, for she did not know the 
way to get out of the forest again. Then 
the king and the other Sannyasin came up 
to her and said, ''Do not weep; we will 
show you the way out of this forest, but it 
is too dark for us to find it now. Here is 
a big tree; let us rest under it, and in the 
morning we will go early and show you the 
road to get out." 

Now a little bird and his wife and three 
little baby birds lived on that tree, in a 
nest. This little bird looked down and saw 
the three people under the tree and said 
to his wife, " My dear, what shall be done; 
here are some guests in the house, and it 
is winter, and we have no fire? " So he flew 
away and got a bit of burning firewood in 
his beak and dropped it before the guests, 

49 



" Each is Great in his Own Place '' 

and they added fuel to it and made a blaz- 
ing fire. But the Httle bird was not satis- 
fied. He said again to his wife, " My dear, 
what shall we do; there is nothing to give 
these people to eat, and they are hungry, 
and we are householders; it is our duty to 
feed any one who comes to the house. I 
must do what I can. I will give them my 
body." So he plunged down into the midst 
of the fire and perished. The guests saw 
him falling and tried to save him, but he 
was too quick for them and dashed into the 
fire and was killed. 

The little bird's wife saw what her hus- 
band did, and she said, " Here are three 
persons and only one little bird for them 
to eat. It is not enough; it is my duty as 
a wife not to let my husband's effort be in 
vain; let them have my body also," and 
she plunged down into the fire and was 
burned to death. Then the three baby 

50 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

birds, when they saw what was done, and 
that there was still not enough food for the 
three guests, said, '' Our parents have done 
what they could and still it is not enough. 
It is our duty to carry on the work of our 
parents; let our bodies go, too," and they 
all dashed down into the fire also. The 
three people could not eat these birds, and 
they were amazed at what they saw. Some- 
how or other they passed the night without 
food, and in the morning the king and the 
Sannyasin showed the princess the way, 
and she went back to her father. 

Then the Sannyasin said to the king, 
'^ King, you have seen that each is great 
in his own place. If you want to live in 
the world live like those birds, ready at any 
moment to sacrifice yourself for others. 
If you want to renounce the world be like 
that young man to whom the most beauti- 
ful woman and a kingdom were as nothing. 

51 



" Each is Great in his Own Place " 

If you want to be a householder hold your 
life a sacrifice for the welfare of others, and 
if you choose the life of renunciation do 
not even see beauty, and money, and 
power. Each is great in his own place, but 
the duty of the one is not the duty of the 
other." 



52 



Ill 

THE SECRET OF WORK 

Helping others physically, by relieving 
their physical needs, is indeed great, but 
the help is greater when the need is 
greater and the help is more far-reaching. 
If a man's wants for an hour can be re- 
moved it is helping him indeed, but if his 
wants can be removed for a year it will be 
more help to him, and if his wants can be 
removed forever it is the greatest help that 
can be given. Spir itual know l£:df?e.is the 
only thing that can rerapve ottp-^aaiseries 
forever; any other knowledge satisfies 
wants only for a time. If the nature of 
the man be changed, then alone all his 
wants will vanish forever. It is only with 

53 



The Secret of Work 

the knowledge of the spirit that the raculty 
of want is annihilated forever, so helping 
man spiritually is the highest help that can 
be given to him; he who gives man spirit- 
ual knowledge is the greatest benefactor of 
mankind, and as such we always find that 
they were the most powerful of men who 
have helped man in his spiritual needs, be- 
cause it is the basis of all other works in 
life. A spiritually strong and sound man 
will be strong in every other respect, if he 
wishes, and until there is spiritual strength 
in mankind even the physical needs can- 
not be satisfied. Next to spiritual comes 
intellectual help; the gift of knowledge is 
a far higher gift than that of food and 
clothes; it is higher, even, than giving life 
to a man, because the real life of man con- 
sists of knowledge; ignorance is death, and 
knowledge is life. Life is of very little 
value if it is a life in the dark, groping 

54 



The Secret of Work 

through ignorance and misery. Next in 
order comes, of course, helping a man phy- 
sically. So, in considering the helping of 
others, we must always strive not to com- 
mit the mistake of thinking that physical 
help is the only help that can be given; 
physical help is the last and the least, be- 
cause there is no permanent satiation. The 
misery that I feel when I am hungry is sat- 
isfied by eating, but hunger returns again; 
misery can only cease when I am satisfied 
beyond all want. Then hunger will not 
make me miserable; no distress, no misery, 
no sorrow will be able to move me. So that 
help which tends to make us strong spirit- 
ually is the highest help; next to it comes 
intellectual help and after that physical 
help. 

The miseries of the world cannot be 
cured by simply physical help; until man's 
nature changes these physical needs will al- 

55 



The Secret of Work 

ways arise, and miseries will be always felt, 
and no amount of physical help given to 
the world will cure that misery. The only 
solution of the problem of all this misery 
in the world is to make mankind pure. Ig- 
norance is the mother of all the evil and all 
the misery we see. Let men have light, let 
them be spiritually strong, and if we can 
accomplish this, if all mankind becomes 
pure and spiritually strong and educated, 
then alone will misery cease in the world 
and not before then. We may convert 
every house in the country into a charity 
asylum; we may fill the lands with hospitals, 
but the misery will still exist until man's 
character changes. 

We read in the Gita again and again 
that we must all work incessantly, but all 
work must be composed of good and evil; 
we cannot do any work which has not some 
part of good somewhere; there cannot be 

56 



The Secret of Work 

any work which will not injure some one 
somewhere. Every work must necessarily 
be a mixture of good and evil; yet we are 
told to work incessantly; the good and evil 
will both have their results, make their 
Karma; the good action will entail upon 
us good effect; the bad action bad effect, 
but good and bad are both bondages of the 
soul. The solution reached in the Gita is 
that if we do not attach ourselves to the 
work it will not take any effect on us. We 
will try to understand what is meant by this 
" non-attachment " to work. 

It is the one central idea in the Gita; 
work incessantly, but be not attached to it. 
*' Samskara '' can be translated very nearly 
by the word tendency. Using the simile 
of a lake for the mind, every ripple, every 
wave that rises in the mind when it sub- 
sides does not die out entirely, but leaves 
a mark and a future possibility of that 

57 



The Secret of Work 

wave coming out again. This mark, with 
the possibility of the wave reappearing, is 
what is called Samskara. Each work that 
/ we do, each movement of the body, each 
thought in the mind, is leaving such an im- 
pression on the mind stuff, and even when 
they are not obvious on the surface, these 
marks are sufficiently strong to work be- 
neath the surface, sub-consciously. What 
we are each moment is determined by the 
sum total of these impressions on the 
mind. What I am just at this moment is 
the effect of the sum total of these marks, 
of my past life. This is really what is meant 
by character; each man's character is de- 
termined by the sum total of these impres- 
sions. If good impressions prevail, that 
character becomes good; if bad, that char- 
acter becomes bad. If a man continuously 
hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does 
bad actions, his mind will be full of these 

58 



The Secret of Work 

impressions, or marks, and they, uncon- 
sciously, will govern the tendency of his 
work. In fact, these impressions are al- 
ways working, and the expression will be 
evil; that man will be a bad man; he can- 
not help it; the sum total of these impres- 
sions will create the strong motive power 
for doing bad actions; he will be a machine 
in the hands of his impressions, and they 
will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a 
man thinks good thoughts and does good 
works the sum total of these impressions 
will be good, and they, in a similar manner, 
will force him to do good in spite of him- 
self. When a man has done so much good 
work and thought so many good thoughts 
that there is an irresistible tendency in his 
nature to do good in spite of himself, then, 
even if he thinks he will do evil, the mind, 
in the sum total of its tendencies, will not 
allow him to do so; the tendencies will 

59 



The Secret of Work 

turn him back; he is at the mercy of his 
good tendencies. When that is the case 
that man's character is said to be estab- 
lished. 

As the tortoise tucks his feet and head 
inside of his shell, and you may kill him 
and break him in pieces, yet they will not 
come out, even so the character of that 
man who has control over his centres and 
organs is established. By this continuous 
reflex of good thoughts, good impressions 
moving over the surface of the mind, the 
tendency becomes strong for good, and the 
result is that we control the '' Indriyas '' 
(the sensory and motor organs). Then 
alone will the character be established; 
then alone you get to truth; that man is 
safe forever; he cannot do any evil; you 
may throw him anywhere; you may put 
him in any company; there will be no dan- 
ger for him. There is a still higher stage 

60 



The Secret of Work 

than having this good tendency, the desire 
for liberation. You must remember that 
freedom of the soul is the goal of all these 
Yogas, and each one equally leads to the 
same result. Just by work, men can get 
where Buddha got by meditation and 
Christ by prayer. Buddha was a Jnani; 
Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal 
was reached. The difficulty is here. Lib- 
eration means entire freedom — freedom 
from the bondages of good, as well as from 
the bondages of evil. A golden chain is 
as much a chain as an iron chain. There 
is a thorn in my finger, and I use another 
thorn to take the first thorn out, and when 
I have taken it out I throw both thorns 
aside; I have no necessity for keeping the 
second thorn, because both are thorns, 
after all. So the bad tendencies are to be 
counteracted by the good tendencies, and 

the bad marks of the mind should be con- 

6i 



The Secret of Work 

quered by fresh waves of good marks, un- 
til those that are evil almost disappear, or 
are subdued and held in control in one 
corner of the mind; but after that, the 
good tendencies have also to be con- 
quered; the "attached'' must become "un- 
attached." Work, but let not the action or 
the thought produce a deep impression on 
the mind; let the ripple come; let huge 
actions proceed from the muscles and the 
brain, but let them not make any deep im- 
pression on the soul. How can that be 
done? We see that the impression of any 
action to which we join ourselves remains. 
I may meet hundreds of persons during 
the day, but I meet one I love, and when 
I retire at night I may try to think of all 
the faces, but that face comes which I met 
only for one minute, and which I loved, 
and all the others have vanished. My at- 
tachment to this particular person caused 

62 



The Secret of Work 

a deeper impression on my mind than all 
the other faces. Physiologically, the im- 
pressions have all been the same; every 
one of these faces that I saw pictured itself 
on the retina, and the brain took the pic- 
ture in, and yet there was no similar effect 
upon the mind. But in the case of that 
man, of whom I caught, perhaps, only a 
glimpse, a deeper impression was made, be- 
cause the other faces found no association 
in my mind; most of them, perhaps, were 
entirely new, faces about which I never 
thought before, but that one face, of which 
I got only a glimpse, found associations in- 
side. Perhaps I had pictured him for years, 
knew hundreds of things about him, and 
this one new thing found hundreds of kin- 
dred things inside my mind, and all these 
associations were aroused; the impression 
on my mental vision was a hundred times 
more than the seeing of all those different 

63 



The Secret of Work 

faces together, and, such being the case, a 
deep impression will be immediately made 
upon the mind. 

Therefore, be "unattached;" let things 
work; let brain centres work, work inces- 
santly, but let not a ripple conquer the 
mind. Work as if you were a stranger in 
this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, 
but do not bind yourselves; bondage is 
terrible. This world is not our habitation, 
it is only one of the many stages through 
which we are passing. Remember that 
great saying of the Sankhya Philosophy, 
^' The whole of nature is for the soul, not 
the soul for nature." The very reason of 
nature's existence is for the education of 
the soul; it has no other meaning; it is 
there because the soul must have knowl- 
edge, and through knowledge will free it- 
self. If we remember this always we shall 
never be attached to nature; we shall 

64 



The Secret of Work 

know that nature is a book in which we 
are to read, and when we have gained that 
knowledge the book itself ceases to be of 
value to us. Instead of that, however, we 
are identifying ourselves with nature; we 
are thinking that the soul is for nature, just 
as the common saying is that one man 
" lives to eat " and another '' eats to live; " 
we are continually making this mistake; we 
are regarding nature as ourselves and are 
becoming attached to it, and as soon as this 
attachment comes there is this deep im- 
pression on the soul, which binds us down 
and makes us work like slaves. 

The whole gist of this teaching is that 
you should work like a master and not as 
a slave; work incessantly, but not slave's 
work. Do you not see how everybody 
works? Nobody can rest; ninety-nine per 
cent of mankind work as slaves, and the re- 
sult is misery; it is selfish work. Work 

65 



The Secret of Work 

through freedom! Work through love! 
The word love is very difficult to under- 
stand; it never comes until there is free- 
dom. There is no love in the slave. If 
you buy a slave and tie him down in chains 
and make him work for you he will work 
like a drudge, but there will be no love. 
So when we ourselves work for the world 
as slaves, there is no love, and it is not 
true work. The same applies to our work 
for our relatives and friends, even for our 
own selves. Suppose a man loves a woman; 
he wishes to have her all to himself and 
feels extremely jealous about her every 
moment; he wants her to sit near him, to 
stand near him and eat and move at his 
bidding. He is a slave to her. That is not 
love; it is a sort of morbid affection of the 
slave, insinuating itself as love. It cannot 
be love, because it is painful; if she does 

not do what he wants it brings pain. With 

66 



The Secret of Work 

love there is no painful reaction; love only 
brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not it 
is not love; we are mistaking something 
else for love. When you have succeeded 
in loving your husband, your wife, your 
children, the whole world, the universe, in 
such a manner that there is no reaction of 
pain, or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then 
you are in a fit state to be unattached. 

Krishna says, '' Look at me, Arjuna! If 
I stop from work for one moment the 
whole universe will die. Yet I have noth- 
ing to gain from the universe, I am one 
Lord. I have nothing to gain from the 
universe; but why do I work? Because I 
love the world.'' God is unattached be- 
cause He loves; that real love makes us 
unattached. Whferever there is this attach- 
ment, this tremendous clinging, you must 
know it is physical, a sort of physical at- 
traction between particles of matter and 

67 



The Secret of Work 

other particles of matter, something that 
attracts two bodies nearer and nearer all 
the time, and if they cannot get near it be- 
comes painful; but where there is real love 
it does not count on physical attachment at 
all. That body may be a thousand miles 
distant, love is all the same; it does not 
die; there will never be a painful reaction. 
To attain this non-attachment is almost 
a life work, but as soon as we have reached 
this point, we have attained the goal and 
become free. The bondage of nature falls 
from us, and we see nature as it is; she 
forges no more chains for us. We stand 
entirely free and take not the results of 
work into consideration. Why care what 
may be the results, either good or bad? 
The man who works through freedom does 
not care for the results. Do you ask any* 
thing from your children in return for what 
you have given them? It is your duty to 






v^ The Secret of Work 



work for them, and there it stops. What- 
ever you do for a particular person, a city, 
or a State, do it, but assume the same atti- 
tude as you have towards your children — 
expect nothing. If you can incessantly 
take that position that you are a giver, that 
everything given by you is a free offering 
to the world, without any thought of re- 
turn, that will be work which will not bring 
attachment. Attachment only comes when 
we expect something. 

This idea of complete self-sacrifice is il- 
lustrated in the following story: — After the 
battle of Kurukshetra the five Pandu 
brothers held a great sacrifice and made 
very large gifts to the poor. All the peo- 
ple expressed amazement at the greatness 
and richness of the sacrifice and said that 
such a sacrifice the*^orld had never seen 
before. But, after the ceremony, there 
came a little mongoose; half his body was 

69 



The Secret of Work 

golden, and the other half was brown, and 
he began to roll himself on the floor of the 
sacrificial hall. Then he said to those 
around, " You are all liars; this is no sac- 
rifice/' "What!" they exclaimed, "you 
say this is no sacrifice! Do you not know 
how money and jewels were poured out 
upon the poor and every one became rich 
and happy? This was the most wonderful 
sacrifice any man ever made." But the 
mongoose said, " There was once a little 
village, and in it there dwelt a poor Brah- 
min, with his wife, his son and his son's 
wife. They were very poor and lived on 
alms gained in preaching and teaching, for 
which men made Httle gifts to them. 

" There came in that land a three years' 
famine, and the poor Brahmin suffered 
more than ever. At last for five days the 
family starved, but on the fifth day the 

father brought home a little barley flour, 

70 



The Secret of Work 

which he had been fortunate enough to 
find, and he divided it into four parts, one 
for each of them. They prepared it for 
their meal, and just as they were about to 
eat it a knock came at the door. The 
father opened it, and there stood a guest. 
In India a guest is sacred; he is as a god 
for the time being, and must be treated as 
such. So the poor Brahmin said, ' Come 
in, sir; you are welcome.' He set before 
the guest his own portion of food, and the 
latter quickly ate it up and then said, ^ Oh, 
sir, you have killed me; I have been starv- 
ing for ten days, and this little bit has but 
increased my hunger/ Then the wife said 
to her husband, ' Give him my share,' but 
the husband said, ' Not so.' The wife, how- 
ever, insisted, saying, ' Here is a poor man, 
and it is our duty as householders to see 
that he is fed, and it is my duty as a wife 
to give him my portion, seeing that you 

n 



The Secret of Work 

have no more to offer him/ Then she gave 
her share to the guest, and he ate it up and 
said he was still burning with hunger. So 
the son said, ' Take my portion also; it is 
the duty of a son to help his father to fulfil 
his obligations/ The guest ate that, but 
remained still unsatisfied; so the son's, wife 
gave him her portion also. That was suffi- 
cient, and the guest departed, blessing 
them. 

" That night those four people died of 
starvation. A few grains of that flour had 
fallen on the floor, and when I rolled my 
body on them half of it became golden, as 
you see it. Since then I have been all over 
the world, hoping to find another sacrifice 
like that, but never have I found one; no- 
where else has the other half of my body 
been turned into gold. That is why I say 

this is no sacrifice." 

72 



IV 

WHAT IS DUTY ? 

It is necessary to know what work is, 
and with that comes, naturally, the ques- 
tion, "What is duty?" If I have to do 
something I must first know my duty, and 
then I can do it. The idea of duty, again, 
is very different in different nations. The 
Mohammedan says what is written in his 
book, the Qur'an, is his duty; the Hindu 
says what is in his book, the Vedas, is his 
duty, and the Christian says what is in his 
Bible is his duty. So we find that there 
must be varied ideas of duty, differing ac- 
cording to different states in life, different 
periods and different nations. The term 
" duty," like every other universal abstract 

73 



What is Duty ? 

term, is impossible to define; we can only 
get an idea of it by describing the sur- 
roundings and by knowing its actions and 
its results. To make an objective definition 
of duty would be entirely impossible; there 
is no such thing as objective duty. Yet 
there is duty from the subjective side. 
Any action that makes us go godward is 
a good action, and is our duty; any action 
that makes us go downward is an evil 
action. There is only one idea which is 
universal for all mankind, of any age, sect 
or country, and that has been summed 
up in the Sanskrit aphorism: — '' Do not in- 
jure any being; non-injuring any being is 
virtue; injuring any being is vice.'' 

One point we ought to remember is that 
we should always try to see the duty of 
others through their eyes, and never judge 
the customs of other races or other peo- 
ples by our own standard. This is the 

74 



What is Duty ? 

great lesson to learn, " I am not the stand- 
ard of the universe. I have to accommo- 
date myself to the world, and not the world 
to me." Therefore we see that environ- 
ments will change our duties, and doing in 
the best way that duty which is ours at a 
certain time is the best thing we can do in 
this world. Let us do that duty which is 
ours by birth, and when we have done that 
do the duty which is ours by our position. 
Each man is placed in some position in life, 
and must do the duties of that position 
first. There is one great difficulty in hu- 
man nature, that man never looks at him- 
self. He thinks he is quite as fit to be on 
the throne as the king. Even if he is, he 
must first show that he has done the duty 
of his. own position, and when he has done 
that, higher duty will come to him. 

Later on we will find that even the idea 
of duty will have to be changed, and that 

75 



What is Duty? 

the greatest work is only done when there 
is the least motive urging us from behind. 
Yet it is work through duty that leads us 
to work without any idea of duty; when 
work will become worship — nay, higher, 
work will stand alone for its own sake. 
But that is the ideal, and the way lies 
through duty. We shall find the philosophy 
behind all duties, either in the form of 
ethics or love, is the same as that in every 
other Yoga — attenuating the lower self, so 
that the real Self may shine; to circum- 
scribe the frittering away of energies on the 
lower planes of existence, so that the soul 
may manifest itself on the higher planes. 
This is accomplished by the continuous de- 
nial of low desires, a denial which duty 
rigorously requires. The whole organiza- 
tion of society has thus been developed, 
consciously or unconsciously, as the land of 
actions, the field of experience, where, by 

76 



What is Duty? 

limiting the desires of selfishness, we open 
the way to an unHmited expansion of the 
real nature of man. 

Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when 
love oils its wheels that it runs smoothly; 
else it is a continuous friction. What par- 
ents can do their duties to their children? 
What children to their parents? What 
husband to his wife? What wife to her 
husband? Do we not meet with cases of 
friction every day in our lives? Duty is 
sweet only through love, love shines alone 
in freedom; yet is it freedom to be a slave 
to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a 
hundred other petty things that must occur 
every day in human life? In all these lit- 
tle roughnesses that we meet with in life 
the highest expression of freedom is to for- 
bear. Women, slaves to their own irritable, 
jealous tempers, are apt to attribute the 
blame to their husbands, and assert their 

77 



What IS Duty ? 

freedom, as they think, not knowing that 
they are only proving that they are slaves. 
So with husbands who are continually find- 
ing fault with their wives. 

Chastity is the first virtue in man or 
woman, and the man who, however he may 
have strayed away, cannot be brought to 
the right path by a gentle and loving and 
chaste wife, is indeed very rare. This world 
is not yet as bad as that. We hear much 
about brutal husbands all over the world 
and the impurity of men, but it is true that 
there are quite as many brutal and impure 
women as men. If all women were as good 
and pure as their own constant assertions 
would lead people to believe, I am perfectly 
satisfied that there would not be one im- 
pure man in the world. With whom could 
men become impure? What brutality is 
there which purity and chastity cannot con- 
quer? A good, chaste wife, who thinks of 

78 



What is Duty? 

every other man except her own husband 
as her child and has the attitude of a 
mother toward all men, will grow so great 
in the power of purity that there will not 
be a single man, however brutal, who will 
not feel an atmosphere of holiness in her 
presence. Similarly every husband must 
look upon all women, except his own wife, 
in the light of his own mother or daughter 
or sister. That man, again, who wants to 
be a teacher of religion must look upon 
every woman as his mother, and always be- 
have toward her as such. 

The position of the mother is the highest 
in the world, as it is the one place in which 
to learn and exercise the greatest unselfish- 
ness. The love of God is the only love 
that is higher than mother's love; all others 
are lower. It is the duty of the mother to 
think of her children first and then of her- 
self. But, instead of that, if the parents are 

79 



What is Duty? 

always thinking of themselves first, the re- 
sult is that the relation between parents and 
children becomes as the relation between 
the birds and their offspring, who, as soon 
as they are fledged, cease to recognize any 
parents. Blessed, indeed, is the man who 
is able to look upon woman as the repre- 
sentative of the Motherhood of God. 
Blessed, indeed, is the woman to whom 
man represents the Fatherhood of God. 
Blessed are the children who look upon 
their parents as Divinty manifested on 
earth. 

The only way to rise spiritually is by 
doing the duty that is in our hands now, 
and making ourselves stronger and going 
higher, until we reach the highest state. 
Nor is duty to be slighted. A man who 
does the lower work is not, therefore, a 
lower man than he who does the higher 

work. A man should not be judged by the 

80 



What is Duty? 

nature of his duties, but by the manner in 
which he does them. His manner of doing 
them and power to do them is the test of 
a man. A shoemaker who can turn out a 
strong, well-made pair of shoes in the 
shortest time is a better man according to 
his works than a would-be professor who 
talks nonsense every day of his life. 

A certain young Sannyasin went to a 
forest and there meditated and worshipped 
and practised Yoga for a long time. After 
twelve years of hard work and practice, he 
was one day sitting under a tree, when 
some dry leaves fell upon his head. He 
looked up and saw a crow and a crane 
fighting on the top of the tree, and they 
made him very angry. He said: — " What! 
You dare throw those dry leaves upon my 
head! " and as he looked upon them with 
anger, a flash of fire burst from his head 
^— the Yogi's power — and burnt the birds 

8i 



What is Duty ? 

to ashes. He was very glad; he was al- 
most overjoyed at this development of 
power; he could burn, at a glance, the crow 
and the crane. After a time he had to go 
into the town to beg his bread. He came 
and stood at a door and said: — " Mother, 
give me food." A voice came from inside 
the house: — " Wait a Httle, my son." The 
young man thought: — "You wretched 
woman, dare you make me wait! You do 
not know my power yet." While he was 
thinking this the voice came again: — 
" Boy, don't be thinking too much of your- 
self. Here is neither crow nor crane." He 
was astonished; still he had to wait. At 
last a woman came, and he fell at her feet 
and said: — '^Mother, how did you know 
that?" She said:— " My boy, I do not 
know your Yoga or your practices. I am 
a common, everyday woman, but I made 

you wait because my husband is ill, and I 

82 



What is Duty ? 

was nursing him, and that was my duty. 
All my life I have struggled to do my duty. 
As a daughter, when I was unmarried, I 
did my duty, and now, when I am married, 
I still do my duty; that is all the Yoga I 
practise, and by doing my duty I have be- 
come illumined; thus, I could read your 
thoughts and know what you had done in 
the forest. But if you want to know some- 
thing higher than this go to such and such 
a town and to the market, and there you 
will find a butcher, and he will tell you 
something that you will be very glad to 
learn." The Sannyasin thought: — "Why 
go to that town and to a butcher." (Butch- 
ers are the lowest class in our country; 
they are called Chandalas; they are not 
touched because they are butchers; they 
do the duty of scavengers, and so forth.) 

But after what he had seen his mind was 
opened a Httle, so he went, and when he 

83 



What is Duty? 

came to the city he found the market, and 
there saw, at a distance, a big, fat butcher 
slashing away at animals, with big knives, 
and bargaining with different people. The 
young man said, " Lord, help me, is this 
the man from whom I am going to learn? 
He is the incarnation of a demon, if he is 
anything." In the meantime this man 
looked up and said, '' Swami, did that lady 
send you here? Take a seat until I have 
finished my business.'' The Sannyasin 
thought, " What comes to me here? " but 
he took a seat and the man went on, and 
after he had finished all his selling and buy- 
ing, took his money and said to the Sann- 
yasin, " Come here, sir; come to my home." 
So they went there and the butcher 
gave him a seat and said, '' Wait there." 
Then he went into the house and there 
were his father and mother. He washed 
them and fed them and did all he could to 

84 



What is Duty ? 

please them, and then came and took a seat 
before the Sannyasin and said, '' Now, sir, 
you are come here to see me; what can I 
do for you? " Then this great Sannyasin 
asked him a few questions about the soul 
and God, and this butcher gave him a lec- 
ture which is a very celebrated book in 
India, the '' Vyadha Gita," and is to be 
found in the Mahabharata, the great In- 
dian epic. It is one of the highest flights 
in the Vedanta, the highest flight of meta- 
physics. You have heard of the Bhagavad 
Gita, Krishna's sermon. When you have 
finished that you should read the " Vyadha 
Gita," it is an epitome of Vedanta phil- 
osophy. When the butcher had finished 
the Sannyasin was astonished. He said, 
"Why are you in that body, with such 
knowledge as yours? Why are you in a 
butcher's body, and doing such filthy, ugly 
work? '* " My son," replied the Chandala, 

85 



What is Duty? 

" no duty is ugly, and no duty is impure. 
My birth placed me in these circumstances 
and environments. In my boyhood I 
learned the trade; I am unattached, and I 
try to do my duty well. I try to do my 
duty as a householder, and I try to do all 
I can to make my father and mother happy. 
I neither know your Yoga, nor have be- 
come a Sannyasin; never went out of the 
world, nor into a forest, but all this has 
come to me through doing my duty in my 
position." 

There is a sage in India, a great Yogi, 
one of the most wonderful men I have seen 
in my life. He is a peculiar man; he will 
not teach any one; if you ask him a ques- 
tion he will not answer. It is too much 
for him to take the position of a teacher; 
he will not take it. If you ask a question, 
and if you wait for some days, in the course 

of conversation, he will bring the subject 

86 



What is Duty ? 

out himself, and wonderful light he will 
throw on it. He told me once the secret 
of work, and what he said was, " Let the 
end and the means be joined into one, and 
that is the secret of work." When you are 
doing work, do not think of anything be- 
yond. Do it as worship, and the highest 
worship, and devote your whole Hfe to it 
for the time being. Thus, in this story, the 
butcher and the woman did their duty with 
cheerfulness, and wholeheartedness, and 
willingness, and the result was that they 
became illuminated, clearly showing that 
the right performance of the duties of any 
station, and being non-attached, lead to the 
highest realization. 

87 



WE HELP OURSELVES, NOT THE WORLD 

Our duty to others means helping 
others, doing good to the world. Why 
should we do good to the world? Appar- 
ently to help the world, but really to help 
ourselves. We should always try to help 
the world; that should be the highest mo- 
tive power in us; but, when we analyze it 
properly, we shall find that this world does 
not require our help. This world was not 
made that you or I should come and help 
it. I once read a sermon in which was 
said: — ''All this beautiful world is very 
good because it gives us time and oppor- 
tunity to help others." Apparently, it was 

a very beautiful sentiment, but, in one 

88 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

sense, it was a curse, for is it not a blas- 
phemy to say that the world needs our 
help? We cannot deny that there is much 
misery in it; to go out and help others is, 
therefore, the highest motive power we 
have, although, in the long run, we shall 
find that it is only helping ourselves. As 
a boy I had some white mice. They were 
kept in a little box and had little wheels 
made for them, and when the mice tried to 
cross the wheels, the wheels turned and 
turned, and the mice never got anywhere. 
So with the world and our helping it. The 
only help is, that you get exercise. This 
world is neither good nor evil; each man 
manufactures a world for himself. If a 
blind man begins to think of it, it is either 
as soft or hard, or cold or hot. We are a 
mass of happiness or misery; we have seen 
that hundreds of times in our lives. As a 
rule, the young are optimistic and the old 

89 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

pessimistic. The young have all life before 
them, and the old are complaining that 
their day is gone. Hundreds of desires, 
which they cannot fulfill, are struggling in 
their brains. Life is at an end for them. 
Both are foolish. This life is neither good 
nor evil. It is according to the different 
states of mind in which we look at the 
world. The most intelligent man would 
call it neither good nor evil. Fire, by itself, 
is neither good nor evil. When it keeps us 
warm we say: — "How beautiful is fire!'' 
When it burns our fingers we blame the 
fire. Still, it was neither good nor bad. As 
we use it, it produces that feehng of good 
or bad, and so is this world. It is perfect. 
By perfection is meant that it is perfectly 
fitted to meet its ends. We can all be per- 
fectly sure that it will go on, and that it 
does not need any help from us. 

Yet we must do good. It is the highest 

90 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

motive power we have, knowing all the 
time it is a privilege to help. Do not stand 
on a pedestal and take five cents and say, 
'' Here, my poor man," but be grateful that 
the poor man is there, so that by giving 
to him you are able to help yourself. It 
is not the receiver that is blessed, but the 
giver. Be thankful that you are allowed 
to exercise your power of benevolence and 
mercy in the world, and thus become pure 
and perfect. All good acts tend to make 
us pure and perfect. What can we do at 
best? Build a hospital, make roads, or 
erect charity asylums! We may organize 
a charity and collect two or three millions 
of dollars, build a hospital with one million, 
with the second give balls and drink cham- 
pagne, and of the third let the officers steal 
half, and the rest may finally reach the 
poor, but what are these? One mighty 
wind, in five minutes, can break it all up. 

91 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

What shall we do then? One volcanic 
eruption can sweep away all our roads, and 
hospitals, and cities and buildings. Let us 
give up all this foolish talk of doing good 
to the world. It is not waiting for your or 
my help, yet we must work and constantly 
do good, because it is a blessing to our- 
selves. That is the only way we can be- 
come perfect. No beggar ever owed a sin- 
gle cent to us, we owe everything to him, 
because he has allowed us to exercise our 
powers of pity and charity on him. It is 
entirely wrong to think that we have done, 
or can do good to the world, or have 
helped such and such people. It is a foolish 
thought, and all foolish thoughts bring 
misery. We think we have helped some 
one and expect him to thank us, and, be- 
cause he does not, unhappiness comes to 
us. Why expect anything? If we were 

really uattached, we should escape all this 

92 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

pain of vain expectation, and could do good 
work in the world. Never will unhappi- 
ness or misery come through w^ork done 
without attachment. This world will go on 
with its happiness and misery through eter- 
nity. 

There was a poor man who wanted some 
money, and, somehow, he had heard that 
if he could get hold of a ghost or some 
spirit, he could command him to bring 
money or anything he liked; so he was very 
anxious to get hold of a ghost. He went 
about searching for a man who would give 
him a ghost, and at last he found a sage, 
with great powers, and besought this sage 
to help him. The sage asked him what he 
would do with a ghost. '' I want a ghost 
to work for me; teach me how to get hold 
of one, sir, I desire it very much,'' replied 
the man. But the sage said, '' Don't dis- 
turb yourself, go home." The next day 

93 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

the man went again to the sage and began 
to weep and pray. " Give me a ghost; I 
must have a ghost, sir, to help me." At 
last the sage was disgusted, and said, "Take 
this charm, repeat this magic word, and a 
ghost will come, and whatever you say to 
this ghost he will do. But beware; they are 
terrible beings, and must be kept contin- 
ually busy. If you fail to give him work 
he will take your life." The man replied: — 
" That's easy; I can give him work for all 
his life." Then he went to a forest, and 
after long repetition of the magic word, a 
huge ghost appeared before him, with big 
teeth, and said: — "I am a ghost. I have 
been conquered by your magic. But you 
must keep me constantly employed. The 
moment you stop I will kill you." The 
man said: — ''Build me a palace," and the 
ghost said, '' It is done; the palace is built." 
" Bring me money," said the man. " Here 

94 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

is your money/' said the ghost. '' Cut this 
forest down, and build a city in its place." 
" That is done/' said the ghost; '' anything 
more? " Now the man began to be fright- 
ened and said: — "I can give him nothing 
more to do; he does everything in a trice." 
The ghost said: — " Give me something to 
do or I will eat you up." The poor man 
could find no further occupation for him, 
and was frightened. So he ran and ran and 
at last reached the sage, and said: — " Oh. 
sir, protect my life! " The sage asked him 
what was the matter, and the man repHed: 
— " I have nothing to give the ghost to do. 
Everything I tell him to do he does in a 
moment, and he threatens to eat me up if 
I do not give him work." Just then the 
ghost arrived, saying, '' I'll eat you up; I'll 
eat you up," and he would have swallowed 
the man. The man began to shake, and 
begged the sage to save his life. The sage 

95 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

said: — " I will find you a way out. Look 
at that dog with a curly tail. Draw your 
sword quickly and cut the tail off and give 
it to the ghost to straighten out." The 
man cut off the dog's tail and gave it to the 
ghost, saying, '' Straighten that out for 
me." The ghost took it and slowly and 
carefully straightened it out, but as soon as 
he let go, it instantly curled up again. 
Once more he laboriously straightened it 
out, only to find it again curled up as soon 
as he attempted to let go of it. Again he 
patiently straightened it out, but as soon 
as he let it go, it curled up once more. So 
he went on for days and days, until he was 
exhausted, and said, " I was never in such 
trouble before in my life. I am an old vet- 
eran ghost, but never before was I in such 
trouble. I will make compromise with 
you," he said to the man. " You let me off 
and I will let you keep all I have given you 

96 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

and will promise not to harm you/' The 
man was much pleased, and accepted the 
offer gladly. 

This world is that dog's curly tail, and 
people have been striving to straighten it 
out for hundreds of years, but when they 
let go, it curls up again. How can it be 
otherwise? One must first know how to 
work without attachment, then he will not 
be a fanatic. When we know that this 
world is like a dog's curly tail and will never 
straighten, we shall not become fanatics. 
They can never do real work. If there were 
no fanaticism in the world it would make 
much more progress than it does now. It 
is all silly nonsense to think that fanaticism 
makes for the progress of mankind. On 
the contrary, it is a retarding element, cre- 
ating hatred and anger, causing people to 
fight each other, and making them unsym- 
pathetic. Whatever we think and believe 

97 



We Help Ourselves, not the World 

we consider the best in the world, and 
what we do not believe, we regard as of no 
value. So, always remember this curly tail 
of the dog whenever you have a tendency 
to become a fanatic. You need not worry 
or make yourself sleepless; the world will 
go on. When you have avoided fanaticism 
then alone will you work well. It is the 
level-headed man, the calm man of good 
judgment and cool nerves, of great sym- 
pathy and love, who does good work. The 
fanatic has no sympathy. 

98 



VI 



NON-ATTACHMENT IS COMPLETE SELF- 
ABNEGATION 

Just as every action that emanates from 
us comes back to us, even so our actions 
may act on other people and theirs on us. 
Perhaps all of you have observed it as a 
fact that when persons do evil actions they 
become more and more evil, and when they 
begin to do good they become stronger 
and stronger . and do good all the time. 
This multiplication of action cannot be ex- 
plained on any other ground, except that 
we can act and react upon each other. To 
take a simile from physical science, when 
I am doing a certain action my mind is in 
a certain form of vibration; all minds un- 

99 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

der similar circumstances would have the 
tendency to be affected by my mind. If 
there are different musical instruments in 
one room all of you have noticed that if 
one is struck the others have a tendency to 
vibrate the same note. So, taking this as 
an illustration, it shows that the instru- 
ments had each the same tension and would 
be affected alike by the same impulse. So 
all minds that have the same tension will 
be equally affected by the same thought. 
Of course, it will vary, according to the dis- 
tance, but it will be open to be affected. 
Suppose I am doing an evil act, my mind 
is in a certain state of vibration, and all 
minds in the universe, in the similar state, 
will have the possibility of being affected 
by my mind. So, when I am doing a good 
action, my mind has another state of ten- 
sion, and all minds similarly attuned will 
have the possibility of being affected, and 

lOQ 




Swam I Vivekananda. 



Non-Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

this power of affection will be more or less 
according to the tension. 

Following this simile further, it is quite 
possible that, just as light waves may travel 
for millions of years before they reach their 
object, so these thought waves may travel 
hundreds of years, until they meet with an 
object with which they vibrate in unison. 
It is quite possible, therefore, that this at- 
mosphere of ours is full of such thought 
pulsations, both good and evil. Every 
thought projected from every brain goes 
on pulsating, as it were, until it meets an 
object. Any mind which is opening itself 
to receive some of these will receive them 
immediately. So, when a mxan is doing evil 
action, he has brought his mind to^a cer- 
tain state of tension, and all the waves cor- 
responding to that state of tension, which 
are already in the atmosphere, will strug- 
gle to enter his mind. That is why an evil- 

lOI 



Non-Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

doer generally goes on doing more and 
more evil. His action is intensified. Such, 
also, will be the case with the doer of good; 
he will open himself to all the good waves 
that are in the atmosphere, and his good 
actions will be intensified. We run, there- 
fore, a twofold danger in doing evil; first, 
we open ourselves to all the evil influences 
surrounding us; secondly, we create evil 
which will afifect others. It may be possible 
that our evil actions will afifect others hun- 
dreds of years hence. In doing evil we in- 
jure ourselves and others also. In doing 
good we do good to ourselves and to 
others, and, like all other forces in man, 
these good and evil forces gather strength 
from outside. 

According to Karma Yoga, the action 
one has done cannot be destroyed until it 
has borne fruit; no power in nature can 

stop it from bearing its results. If I do an 

1 02 



Non- Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

evil action, I must suffer for it; there is no 
power in this universe to stop or stay it. 
So, if I do a good action there is no power 
in the universe which can stop its bearing 
good results. The cause must have its ef- 
fect; nothing can restrain it. Now comes 
a very fine and serious question about 
Karma Yoga — that these actions of ours, 
either good or evil, are intimately con- 
nected with each other. We cannot put a 
line of demarcation and say this action is 
entirely good and this entirely evil. There 
is no action which does not bear good and 
evil at the same time. To take the nearest 
example: I am talking to you, and some 
of you, perhaps, think I am doing good, 
and at the same time I am, perhaps, killing 
thousands of microbes in the atmosphere; 
I am doing evil to something else. When 
it is very near to us and affects those we 

know we say it is very good action, if it 

103 



Non- Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

affects them in a good manner. For in- 
stance, you may call my speaking to you 
very good, but the microbes will not; the 
microbes you do not see, but yourselves 
you do see. The effect on you is obvious, 
but that on the microbes is not obvious. 
And so, if we analyze our evil actions, we 
will find that some good was done some- 
where. '' He who in good action sees that 
there is something evil in it and who in the 
midst of evil sees that there is some good 
in it somewhere has known the secret of 
work." 

But what follows from it? That, how- 
ever we may try, there cannot be any 
action which is perfectly pure, or any which 
is perfectly impure, taking purity or im- 
purity in the sense of injury or non-injury. 
We cannot breathe or live without injuring 
others, and every bit of food we eat is taken 

from another's mouth; our very lives are 

104 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

crowding out some other lives. It may be 
men, or animals, or small microbes, but 
some one we have to crowd out. That be- 
ing the case, it naturally follows that per- 
fection can never be attained by work. We 
may work through all eternity, but there 
will be no way out of this intricate maze; 
you may work on, and on, and on; there 
will be no end. 

The second point to consider is, What is 
the end of work? We find the vast ma- 
jority of people in every country beheving 
that there will be a time when this world 
will become perfect, when there will be no 
disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor 
wickedness. That is a very good idea, a 
very good motive power for the ignorant, 
but if we think for a moment we will find 
that on the very face of it it cannot be so. 
How can it be, seeing that good and bad 

are the obverse and reverse of the same 

105 



Non-Attachment it Self- Abnegation 

coin? How can you have good without 
evil at the same time? What is meant by- 
perfection? A perfect Hfe is a contradic- 
tion in terms. Life itself is a state of con- 
tinuous struggle between ourselves and 
everything outside. Every moment we are 
fighting with external nature, and if we are 
defeated our life will have to go. It is a 
continuous struggle for food. If food fails 
we die. Life is not a simple effect, but a 
compound effect. This compound strug- 
gle between something inside and the ex- 
ternal world is what we call life. So, on 
the very face of it, when this struggle 
ceases, there will be an end of what we call 
life. 

What is meant by this ideal happiness is 
that this struggle will cease altogether. 
But then life will cease, for the struggle can 
only cease when life has ceased. Then, 

again, before we have attained to one- 

io6 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

thousandth part of it, this earth will have 
cooled down, and we will not be. So this 
millennium cannot be in this world, if it can 
be anywhere else. Every act of charity, 
every thought of sympathy, every action 
of help, every good deed, is taking so much 
away from our little selves and making us 
think of ourselves the least and, therefore, 
is good. Here we find that the Jnani, or 
Bhakta, or Karmi, all come to one point. 
The highest ideal is eternal and entire self- 
abnegation, where there is no " I," but is 
all thou; and consciously, or unconsciously. 
Karma Yoga leads to that. It is the basis 
of all morality; you may extend it to men, 
or animals, or angels, but it is the one basic 
idea, the one fundamental principle run- 
ning through all ethical systems. 

You will find various classes of men in 
this world. First, there are the God-men, 

who are abnegating themselves entirely 

107 



f 



Non- Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

and will do good to others, even at the sac- 
rifice of their own Hves. These are the 
highest of men. If there are a hundred of 
such in any country, that country need not 
despair. Then there are good men, who 
do good to others so long as it does not in- 
jure themselves; and there is a third class, 
who, to do good to themselves, would injure 
others. It is said there is a fourth class of 
people, who will injure others for injury's 
sake. Just as there are at one pole of ex- 
istence the good men, who will do good for 
good's sake, so, at the other pole, there are 
others who will injure others, just for the 
sake of injury. They do not gain anything 
thereby, but it is their nature. So we see 
that the man who sacrifices himself to do 
good to others, the man with the highest 
self-abnegation, is the greatest man. 

Here are two Sanskrit words. One is 

called " Pravritti," revolving towards, and 

io8 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

the other is '' Nivritti," revolving away. 
The '* revolving towards " is what we call 
the world, '' I and mine/' those who are al- 
ways enriching that " me " by wealth, and 
property, by power, and name, and fame, 
always wanting to accumulate everything 
towards one centre, and that centre " my- 
self." That is the " pravritti," the natural 
tendency of every human being; taking 
everything from everywhere and heaping it 
around one centre, and that centre his own 
sweet self. When this begins to break, 
when it is " nivritti," " going away from," 
then begin morality and religion. Both 
" pravritti " and " nivritti " are work, but 
one is evil work, and the other is good 
work. This " nivritti " is the basis of all 
morality and all religion, and the very per- 
fection of it is entire self-abnegation, readi- 
ness to sacrifice mind, body and every- 
thing for another being. When a man has 

109 



Non- Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

reached that state he has attained to the 
perfection of Karma Yoga. This is the 
highest result of good works. If a man has 
not studied a single philosophy, if he does 
not believe in any God, and never has, if 
he has never prayed even once in his whole 
life, but, if the simple power of good ac- 
tions has brought him to that state where 
he is ready to give up his life and all else 
for others, he has arrived at the same point 
to which the religious man will come 
through his prayers and the philosopher 
through his knowledge, and so you find 
that the philosopher, the worker, and the 
devotee, all meet at one point, and that one 
point is self-abnegation. However the sys- 
tems of philosophy may differ in opinion, 
all mankind stands in reverence and awe 
before the man who is ready to sacrifice 
himself for others. No more question of 

creed, or doctrine — even men who are very 

no 



Non- Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

much opposed to all religious ideas, when 
they see one of these acts of complete self- 
sacrifice, must revere it. Have you not 
seen even a most bigoted Christian, when 
he reads Sir Edwin Arnold's " Light of 
Asia," stand in reverence for Buddha, who 
preached no God, preached nothing but 
self-sacrifice? The only thing is that the 
bigot does not know that his own aim and 
end in life is exactly the same. The wor- 
shipper, by keeping constant the idea of 
God and a surrounding of good, comes to 
the same point at last, '' Thy will be done," 
and keeps nothing for himself. That is 
self-abnegation. The philosopher, with his 
knowledge, sees that the seeming self is a 
delusion and easily gives it up; yet it is 
self-abnegation. So the paths of Karma, 
Bhakti and Jnana all meet here, and this 
is what was meant by all the great preachers 

of ancient times, when they taught that 

III 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

God is not the world. There is one thing 
which is world and another which is God, 
and this is very true; what they mean by 
the world is selfishness. Unselfishness is 
God. One may live on a throne, in a gol- 
den palace, and be perfectly unselfish, and 
he is in God. Another may live in a hut, 
and wear rags, and have nothing in the 
world, yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely 
merged in the world. 

To come back to one of our points, we 
say that we cannot do good without doing 
some evil, or evil without doing some 
good. Knowing this, how can we work? 
A solution is found in the Gita, the theory 
of non-attachment, to be attached to noth- 
ing. Know that you are separated entirely 
from this world; that you are in the world, 
but whatever you are doing, you are not 
doing for your own sake. Any action that 
you do for yourself will bring an effect on 

112 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

you. If it is a good action you will have 
to take the good effect, and, if bad, you 
will have to take the bad effect; but any 
action that is not done for your own sake, 
whatever it be, will have no effect on you. 
Even if a man kill the whole world, he is 
neither killed nor is killing, when he knows 
that he is not acting for himself at all. 
Therefore, Karma Yoga teaches, do not 
give up the world; live in the world, take 
it in as much as you can, but not for the 
sake of enjoyment. Enjoyment should not 
be the goal. First kill yourself and then 
take the whole world as yourself. " The 
old man must die." This old man is this 
selfish idea that the whole world is made for 
our enjoyment. There are people who 
teach us that all the animals were created 
for us to kill and eat, and that this universe 
IS for the enjoyment of man. That is all 
foolishness. A tiger might as well say, 

113 



Non-Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

" Man was created for me," and cry, " O 
Lord, how wicked are these men, who do 
not come and put themselves before us to 
be eaten; they are breaking your law." If 
the world is created for us we are also cre- 
ated for the world. That this world is 
created for our enjoyment is the idea that 
holds us down. This world is not for our 
sake; millions pass out of it every year; 
the world does not feel it; millions of others 
have been suppHed. Just as the world is 
for us, we are for the world. 

To work, therefore, first give up the idea 
of attachment. Secondly, do not mix in 
the fray; hold yourself as a witness and go 
on working. A sage has said, " Look upon 
your children as your nurse does." The 
nurse will take your baby and fondle it and 
play with it and behave as gently as if it 
were her own child, but as soon as you 
give her notice she is ready to start oflf with 

114 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

her baggage from the house. Everything 
is forgotten; it would not give the ordinary 
nurse the least pang to leave your children 
and take up other children. Even so be 
with your own. You are the nurse, and, if 
you believe in God, believe that these are 
all His. The greatest weakness generally 
insinuates itself as the greatest good and 
strength. This is weakness to think that 
some one depends on me, and I can do 
good to somebody. This pride is the 
mother of all our attachment, and through 
this attachment comes all our pain. We 
must inform our minds that no one in this 
universe depends upon us; not one beggar 
depends on our charity; not one soul on 
our kindness; not one on our help. They 
are all helped and will be helped if millions 
of us were not here. The course of nature 
will not stop for you and me; it is only a 
blessed privilege to you and me that we 

115 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

are allowed in the shape of help to others, 
to educate ourselves. This is one lesson to 
learn, through the whole of our lives, and 
when we have learned it fully we shall never 
be unhappy; we can go and mix anywhere 
and everywhere. This very year some of 
our friends may have died. Is the world 
waiting for them? Is its current stopped? 
It goes on. So drive out, thrash out of- your 
mind, this idea that you have to do some- 
thing for the world; the world does not re- 
quire any help from you. When you have 
trained your nerves and your muscles to 
this idea there will be no reaction in the 
form of pain. When you give something 
to a man and expect nothing — do not ex- 
pect the man to be grateful — it will not tell 
upon you, because you never expected any- 
thing, never thought you had a right to 
anything; you gave what he deserved; his 

own Karma got it for him; your Karma 

ii6 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

made you the carrier. Why should you be 
proud of giving something? You are the 
porter who carried the money, and the 
world deserved it by its own Karma. 
Where is the reason for pride? There is 
nothing very great in what you give tp the 
world. When you have got the feeling of 
non-attachment there will be neither good 
nor evil work for you. It is only selfishness 
that makes the difference of good and evil. 
It is a very hard thing to understand, but 
you will come tp learn in time that noth- 
ing in the universe has power over you un- 
til you admit it. Nothing has power over 
the Self of man until the self becomes a 
fool and obeys the power. So, by non-at- 
tachment, you deny the power of anything 
to act upon you. It is very easy to say that 
nothing has the right to act upon you until 
you allow it, but what is the sign of the man 

who really does not allow anything to work 

117 



Non-Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

upon him, who is neither happy nor un- 
happy, when he is acted upon by the ex- 
ternal world? The sign is that it makes no 
change in his mind; in good fortune or in 
ill he remains the same. 

There was a great sage called Vyasa. 
This Vyasa was the writer of the Vedanta 
philosophy, a holy man. His father had 
tried to become a very perfect man and 
failed; his grandfather tried, failed. His 
great-grandfather tried, failed. He himself 
did not succeed perfectly, but his son, 
Shuka, was born perfect. He taught this 
son, and, after teaching him himself, he 
sent him to the court of King Janaka. 
There was a great king called Janaka 
Videha. Videha means "outside the body." 
Although a king, he had entirely forgot- 
ten that he was a body; he was a spirit all 
the time. This boy was sent to be taught 

by him. The King knew that Vyasa's son 

Ii8 



<r 



-^ 



Non- Attachment is Self- Abnegation 

was coming to him to learn, so he made 
certain arrangements beforehand, and when 
thi3 boy presented himself at the gates of 
the palace the guards took no notice of him 
whatsoever. They only gave him a place 
to sit, and he sat there for three days and 
nights, nobody speaking to him, nobody 
asking who he was or whence he was. 
He was the son of this great sage; his 
father was honored by the whole country, 
and he himself was a most respected per- 
son, yet the low, vulgar guards of the pal- 
ace would take no notice of him. After 
that, suddenly, the ministers of the King 
and all the high officials came there and 
received him with the greatest honors. 
They took him in and showed him into 
splendid rooms, gave him the most fra- 
grant baths and wonderful dresses, and for 
eight days they kept him there in all kinds 

of luxury. That face did not change; he 

119 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

was the same in the midst of this luxury as 
at the door. Then he was brought before 
the King. The King was on his throne, 
music was playing, and dancing and other 
amusements going on. The King gave 
him a cup of milk, full to the brim, and 
asked him to go seven times round the 
hall without spilling a drop. The boy took 
the cup and proceeded in the midst of this 
music and the beautiful faces. Seven times 
he went round, and not a drop of milk was 
spilled. The boy's mind could not be at- 
tracted by anything in the world, unless he 
allowed it. And when he brought the cup 
to the King, the King said to him, " What 
your father has taught you and what you 
have learned yourself I can only repeat; 
you have known the truth; go home." 

Thus, the man that has practised control 
over himself cannot be acted upon by any- 
thing outside; there is no more slavery for 

1 20 




A 



^ 



Non- Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

him. The mind has become free; such a 
man alone is fit to Hve in the world. We 
generally find men of two opinions. To 
those who have not controlled their own 
minds this world is either full of evil or a 
mixture of good and evil. This very world 
will become an optimistic world when we 
have become masters of our own minds. 
Nothing will work upon us as good or evil; 
we shall find everything harmonious. Some 
men who begin by saying the world is a 
hell will end by saying it is heaven. If we 
are genuine Karma Yogis and want to 
train ourselves to this state, wherever we 
may begin we shall end in perfect self-ab- 
negation, and as soon as this seeming self 
has gone this whole world, which at first 
appears to us to be filled with evil, will ap- 
pear to be heaven and full of blessedness. 
Its very atmosphere will be blessed; every 
human face will be good. This is the goal 

121 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

and end of Karma Yoga, and this is per- 
fection. So, you see, these various Yogas 
do not conflict with each other; each one 
goes to the same goal and makes us per- 
fect, but each one has to be practised. The 
whole secret is in practising. First hear, 
then think, and then practise. This is true 
of every Yoga. You have first to hear 
about it and understand what it is, and 
many things you do not understand, by 
constant hearing, will be made clear. It is 
hard to understand everything at once. 
The explanation of everything is in your- 
self. No one was ever taught by another; 
each one of us has to teach himself. The 
external teacher is only the suggestion 
which rouses the internal teacher to under- 
stand things. Then things will be made 
clearer by the power of perception, and we 
shall realize them in our own souls, and 
that will become an intense power of will. 

122 



Non-Attachment is Self-Abnegation 

First feeling, then it becomes willing, and 
out of that willingness will come the tre- 
mendous power of work that will go 
through every vein, and nerve, and muscle, 
until the whole mass of your body is 
changed into that unselfish Yoga of work, 
and the result will be perfect self-abnega- 
tion; utter unselfishness. It does not de- 
pend on any dogma, or doctrine, or belief; 
either Christian, or Jew, or Gentile, it does 
not matter. Are you unselfish? That is 
the question. If you are, you will be per- 
fect without reading a single religious 
book, without going into a single church or 
temple. '' Fools alone say that work and 
philosophy are different, not the learned." 
The learned know that, though apparently 
different from each other, they at last 
come to the same goal, and that is per- 
fection. 

123 



VII 

FREEDOM 

In addition to meaning work, we have 
seen that the word Karma also means 
causation. Any work, any action, any 
thought, that produces an efifect is called a 
Karma. This law of Karma means the law 
of causation; wheresoever there is a cause, 
an efifect must be produced; it cannot be 
resisted, and that law of Karma, according 
to our philosophy, is pervading the whole 
universe. Whatever we see, or feel, or do; 
whatever action there is anywhere in the 
universe, is but the efifect of past work on 
the one hand, and, on the other hand, be- 
comes the cause, and produces another ef- 
fect. It is necessary, together with this, to 

124 



Freedom 

consider the word law. We see psycho- 
logically that law is the tendency of a series 
to repeat itself. When we see one event 
followed by another, or sometimes happen- 
ing simultaneously, we expect this will al- 
ways follow. A series of phenomena be- 
come associated in our mind in a sort of 
invariable order, so that what we see at one 
time immediately refers to other facts in the 
mind. One idea, or, according to our 
psychology, one wave, produced in the 
mind stufif, always produces many similar 
ones. This is the law of association, and 
causation is only a part of this law of per- 
vasive association. In the external world 
the idea of law is the same as in the internal 
world — the expectation that one phenome- 
non will be followed by another, and that 
the series will repeat itself, so far as we can 
see. Really speaking, therefore, law does 
not exist in nature. Practically, it is an 

125 



Freedom 

error to say that gravitation exists in the 
earth, or that there is any law existing any- 
where in nature. Law is the method, the 
manner in which our mind grasps a series 
of phenomena; it is all in the mind. Cer- 
tain phenomena happening together, fol- 
lowed by the conviction with which our 
mind grasps the whole series, is what we 
call law. 

The next question will be what we mean 
by law being universal. Our universe is 
that portion of existence which is cut off 
by what the Sanskrit psychologists call 
" Nama-Rupa " (name and form). This 
universe is only one part of that infinite ex- 
istence, which has been thrown into a pe- 
culiar mould, or that is composed of name 
and form, and when it fills that mould that 
part of the sum total of existence which 
fills the mould is what is called our uni- 
verse. It necessarily follows that law is 

126 



Freedom 

only possible within this universe; beyond 
that there can not be any law. When we 
speak of this universe we only mean that 
portion of existence which is Hmited by our 
mind; the universe of senses, which we can 
see, feel, touch, hear, think of, imagine; 
that portion of the universe alone is under 
law, but beyond that it cannot be under 
law, because causation does not extend be- 
yond that. Anything beyond the range of 
our mind and our senses is not bound by 
the law of causation, as there is no associa- 
tion beyond the senses, and no causation 
without association of ideas. It is only 
when it gets moulded into name and form 
that existence obeys the law of causation, 
and is said to be under law, because law has 
its essence in causation. Therefore, we see 
at once that there cannot be any free will; 
the very words are a contradiction, because 

will is what we know, and everything that 

127 



J 



Freedom 

we know is within our universe, and every- 
thing within our universe has been moulded 
into name and form, and everything that 
we know, or can possibly know, must obey 
causation, and that which obeys the law of 
causation cannot be free. It is acted upon 
by other agents, and becomes cause in turn, 
and so on. But that which became con- 
verted into the will, which was not the will, 
but which, when it fell into this mould, be- 
came converted into the human will, is free, 
and when this will gets out of this mould of 
causation it will be free again. From free- 
dom it comes, and becomes moulded into 
this bondage, and it gets out and goes back 
to freedom. 

The question was raised, " From whom 
this universe comes, in whom it rests, and 
to whom it goes? " The answer was given, 
" From that Freedom it comes, it rests in 

bondage, and it goes back into that Free- 

128 



Freedom 

dom." So, when we speak of man as 
that being who is manifesting, only one 
part is man; this body and this mind which 
we see are only one part of the whole man, 
only one spot of that infinite Being which 
is man. This whole universe is only one 
speck of the infinite Being, and all our laws, 
and our bondages, our joys and our sor- 
rows, our happinesses, and our expecta- 
tions, are only within this small universe, 
all our progression and digression are 
within this small space. Thus you see how 
childish it is to expect a continuation of 
this world, to expect and hope to go to 
heaven, which means a repetition of this 
world that we have. You see at once that 
it IS an impossible and childish desire to 
make the whole infinite universe conform 
to that existence which we know. When a 
man says he will have this thing again and 

again which he is having now, or, as I 

129 



Freedom 

sometimes say, when he asks for a com- 
fortable rehgion, you may know that he has 
become so degenerate that he cannot think 
of anything higher than he is now, just hjs 
little present surroundings. He has for- 
gotten his infinite nature, and his whole 
idea is confined to these Httle joys and sor- 
rows, and jealousies of the moment. He 
thinks this is the infinite, and not only so, 
he will not let it go. He clings on desper- 
ately to " Trishna," the thirst after life. 
There are milHons of happinesses, and be- 
ings, and laws, and progresses, and causa- 
tions all acting apart from what we know. 
This is but one section of our infinite na- 
ture. 

To acquire freedom we have to get be- 
yond this universe; it cannot be found 
here. Perfect equilibrium cannot be at- 
tained in this universe, nor in heaven, nor 
earth, nor anywhere where thoughts can 

130 V 



Freedom 

go, or the mind, where the senses can feel, 
see, hear or touch, or which we can imag- 
ine^J^o such place can give freedom, be- 
jRjS^e it would be all within our universe, 
and thiaifefcuniverse must be bound by causa- 
tiou^r:-'lt may be much finer than this; 
there are places that are much finer than 
this earth of ours, where enjoyments will 
be keener, but it will be in the universe, 
and therefore in bondage, so we will 
have to go beyond, and real religion be- 
gins there, where this little universe ends. 
Where these little joys, and sorrows, and 
knowledges end, there the Real begins. 
Until we can give up this thirst after life, 
this strong attachment to this existence of 
one moment, we have no hope of catching 
even a glimpse of that infinite freedom be- 
yond. It stands then that there is only one 
way to attain to that freedom which is the 
goal of mankind, and that is by giving up 

131 



Freedom 

this little life, giving up this little universe, 
giving up this earth, giving up heaven, giv- 
ing up the body, giving up the mind, giving 
up everything. If we can give up this lit- 
tle universe of the senses, or the mind, im- 
mediately v^e shall be free. The only way 
to come out of bondage is to go beyond 
law, go beyond causation, and wherever 
this universe exists, there causation pre- 
vails. A\\ 

But it is the most difficult thing to give 
up this universe; few ever attain to that. 
There are two ways in our books. One is 
called the " Neti Neti " (not this, not this), 
the negative; and the other is called the 
" Iti Iti " (this, this), the positive way. The 
negative way is the most difficult. It is 
only possible to the very highest, excep- 
tional minds, with gigantic will powers, 
who simply stand and say, " No, I will not 
have this," and the mind and body obey, 

13^ 



Freedom 

and they come out. But such people are 
very rare, and the vast majority of man- 
kind choose the positive way, the way 
through this world, making use of all the 
bondages themselves to break those bon- 
dages, ^hat is also giving up, only slowly 
and gradually, by knowing things, enjoy- 
ing things, and thus getting experience, 
and knowing the nature of things, until the 
mind lets them go away and becomes unat- 
tached. The one is by reasoning and the' 
other is through work. The first is for the j 
Jnani, and is by refusing to work, and ^ 
the second is Karma Yoga, by working. 
Every one must work in the universe. 
^^ Only those who are perfectly satisfied 
with the Self, whose desires do not go be- 
yond the Self, whose mind never strays out 
of the Self, to whom that Self is all in all, 
do not work." The rest must all work. A 
current rushing down stream of its own na- 

133 



Freedom 

ture, falls into a hollow and makes a whirl- 
pool, and, after running a little in that 
whirlpool, it emerges again in the form of 
the free current. So each human life is Hke 
that current. It gets into the whirl, gets 
involved in this world of name and form, 
whirls round a little, crying, my father, my 
brother, my name, my fame, and at last 
emerges, and regains its freedom. The 
whole universe is doing that, whether it 
knows it or not. Every one is having this 
experience, consciously or unconsciously, 
and in the long run getting out of this 
whirlpool. 

But what is Karma Yoga? Knowing the 
secret of work. We see that the whole uni- 
verse IS working. For what? For salva- 
tion, for liberty, from the atom to the 
highest being; working for that one end, 
liberty for the mind, for the body, for the 
spirit, for everything; always trying to get 

134 



Freedom 

freedom, flying away from bondage. The 
sun, moon, earth, the planets, are all try- 
ing to fly from bondage. Karma Yoga 
tells us the secret, the method of work. In- 
stead of being knocked about in this uni- 
verse, and after long delay and thrashing, 
getting to know things as th^y are, Karma 
Yoga teaches us the secret of work, the 
method of work, the organizing power of 
work. The vast mass of energy may be 
spent in vain, if we do not know how to 
utilize it. Karma Yoga makes a science of 
it; you learn how to utilize all the work- 
ings of this world. Work is inevitable, 
it must be, but work to the highest pur- 
pose. Karma Yoga makes us admit that 
this world is a world of five minutes; that 
it is something we have to pass through; 
that real freedom is not here, but we must 
go beyond to come to freedom. To find 
the way out we will have to go through it 

135 



Freedom 

slowly and surely. There may be those ex- 
ceptional persons about whom I just spoke, 
who can stand aside and give it up, as a 
snake casts off its skin and stands aside and 
looks at it; there are some of these excep- 
tional beings; but for the rest of mankind, 
they have to slowly go through it, and Kar- 
ma Yoga shows to the world the process, 
the secret, the method of doing it to the 
best advantage. 

What does it say? ^' Work thou inces- 
santly, but give up all attachment to work." 
Do not identify yourself with anything. 
Hold your mind free. All this that you see, 
the pains and the miseries, are but condi- 
tions of this world; poverty and wealth, and 
happiness, are but momentary; they do not 
belong to our nature at all. Our nature is 
far beyond misery, or happiness, beyond 
everything of the senses, beyond the im- 
agination; and yet we must go on work- 

136 



Freedom 

ing all the time. " Misery comes through 
attachment, not through work." As soon 
as we identify ourselves with the work we 
feel miserable, but if we do not identify our- 
selves with it we do not feel that misery. 
If a beautiful picture belonging to another 
is burned, a man does not become miser- 
able, but when his own picture is burned 
how miserable he feels! Why? Both were 
beautiful pictures, perhaps copies of the 
same original, but in one case misery is 
felt and not in the other. It is because in 
one case he identifies himself with the pic- 
ture, and not in the other. This " I and 
mine " causes the whole misery. With pos- 
session came selfishness, and selfishness 
brought misery. Every act of selfishness 
or thought of selfishness makes us attached 
to something behind, and immediately we 
are made slaves. Each wave in the Chitta 
that says " I and mine," immediately puts 

137 



Freedom 

a chain round us and makes us slaves, and 
the more we say " I and mine '! the more 
slavery grows, the more misery increases. 
Therefore, Karma Yoga tells us to enjoy 
all the pictures in the world, but not to 
identify ourselves with them. Never say 
" Mine/' Whenever we say a thing is ours, 
misery will immediately come. Do not 
even say " My child " in your mind. En- 
joy the child, but do not say '' Mine." If 
you do, then will come the misery. Do not 
say '' My house," do not say " My body." 
The whole difficulty is there. The body is 
neither yours nor mine nor anybody's. 
These bodies are coming and going by the 
laws of nature, but we are free, standing as 
witness. This body is no more free than a 
picture, or the wall. Why should we at- 
tach ourselves to a body? If somebody 
paints a picture, he does it and passes away. 
Why be attached to it? Let it pass. Do 

138 



Freedom 

not project that tentacle of selfishness, " I 
will possess it." As soon as that is pro- 
jected misery will begin. 

So the Karma Yogi says, first destroy 
the tendency to project this tentacle of 
selfishness, and when you have the power 
of checking that, hold it in, do not allow 
the mind to get into that sort of wave. 
Then go out into the world and work as 
much as you can. Mix everywhere; go 
where you please; you will never be 
touched. Like the lotus leaf in water, 
which the water cannot wet, so will you be. 
This is called '' Vairaghyam." It is the law 
of Karma Yoga, non-attachment. I have 
just told you that without non-attachment 
there cannot be any Yoga. It is the basis 
of all the Yogas, and this is the real mean- 
ing of non-attachment; the man who gives 
up living in houses, and wearing fine 
clothes, and eating good food, and goes 

139 



Freedom 

into the desert, may be a most attached 
person. His only possession, his own body, 
may become everything to him, and he is 
struggHng for his body. Non-attachment 
does not mean what we do in our external 
body, but it is in the mind; this connect- 
ing link of " I and mine " is in the body. 
If we have not this link with the body, and 
with things of the senses, we are non-at- 
tached, wherever we be. A man may be on 
a throne and perfectly non-attached; an- 
other man may be in rags and still very 
much attached. First, we attain to this 
non-attachment, and then we work inces- 
santly. Karma Yoga gives a method to 
help us in giving up this attachment. It is 
hard to give it up. 

Here are the two ways of giving up all 
attachment. The one is for those who do 
not believe in God, or in any outside help. 

They are left to their own devices; they 

140 



Freedom 

have simply to work with their own will, 
the power of the mind, that '' I must be 
non-attached," and with the power of dis- 
crimination. For those who believe in 
God, it is less difficult. They give up the 
fruits of work unto the Lord, and then go 
to work and are never attached to the re- 
sults. Whatever they see, feel, hear, do, is 
for Him. Whatever good work we do, let 
us not take any praise to ourselves. It is 
the Lord's; give up the fruits unto Him. 
The grandest works that we do in our lives, 
never let us think that we shall receive the 
benefits thereof, or that we have done a 
good work. Let us be at peace, perfect 
peace, with ourselves, and give up our 
whole body and mind and everything as an 
eternal sacrifice. Instead of the sacrifice of 
pouring oblations into the fire, make this 
one great sacrifice day and night — the sac- 
rifice of the little self. Day and night re- 

141 



Freedom 

nounce the seeming self until it becomes a 
habit, until it gets into the blood, the 
nerves, the brain, and the whole body is 
every moment obedient to this idea. Then 
we can get out anywhere, nothing will 
touch us. Go into the midst of the battle- 
field, with roaring cannon and the din of 
war, and we shall be free and at peace. 

Karma Yoga teaches us duty as on the 
lower plane; each one of us must do his 
duty. This is my duty, and that is my duty. 
Yet we see that this duty is the one great 
cause of misery. It becomes a disease with 
us, drags us ever forward. It clutches hold 
of us and makes our whole life miserable. 
It is the bane of human life. '' This idea of 
duty is the mid-day summer sun which 
scorches the innermost soul of mankind." 
Look at those poor slaves to duty. Duty 
leaves them no time to think of anything 
else, no time to say prayers, no time to 

142 



Freedom 

bathe. Duty is ever on them. They go 
out and work. Duty is on them. They 
come home and think of the work for next 
day. Duty is on them! It is living a slave's 
life, at last dropping down in the street and 
dying in harness, like a horse. This is duty 
as it is understood. The only duty is to be 
unattached and to work as free beings. 
Blessed are we that we are here. We serve 
our time; whether we do it ill or well, who 
knows? If we do it well, we do not get the 
reward. If we do it ill, neither do we get 
the punishment. Be at rest, be free, and 
work. This is a very hard thing to attain. 
How easy it is to interpret slavery as duty 
— the morbid attachment of flesh for flesh 
as duty! Men go out into the world and 
struggle and fight for money. Ask them 
why they do it. They say: — '' It is a duty." 
It is the absurd greed for gold, and they 
want to cover it with a few flowers. 

143 



Freedom 

What is duty, after all? It is this impul- 
sation of the flesh, our attachment; and 
when an attachment has been established, 
we call it duty. For instance, in countries 
where there is no marriage, there is no duty 
between husband and wife; when marriage 
comes and husband and wife live together, 
they live together on account of flesh at- 
tachment, and that becomes settled after 
generations, and when it becomes settled 
it becomes a duty. It is a sort of chronic 
disease. When it is acute we call it a dis- 
ease, when it is chronic we call it nature. 
But it is a disease just the same. So when 
attachment becomes chronic we baptize it 
with the high sounding name of duty. We 
strew flowers upon it, trumpets sound, 
sacred texts are said over it, and then the 
whole world fights, and each one robs the 
other for this duty's sake. Duty is good; 

it checks brutality to a certain extent. To 

144 



Freedom 

the lowest men, who cannot have any other 
ideal, it is of some good, but those who 
want to be Karma Yogis must throw this 
idea of duty overboard. There is no duty 
for you and me. Whatever you have to 
give to the world, give, but not as a duty. 
Do not take any thought of that. Be not 
compelled. Why should you be compelled? 
Everything that you do under compulsion 
is attachment. Why should you have any 
duty? You have no duty under the sun. 
If you want reward you must also have 
punishment; the only way to get out of 
the punishment is to give up the reward. 
The only way of getting out of misery is 
by giving up the idea of happiness, because 
these two are linked to each other. On 
one side happiness, on the other misery. 
On one side life, on the other death. The 
only way to get beyond death is to give up 
life; not to care for it. Life and death are 

145 



Freedom 

the same thing, looked at from different 
points. So the idea of happiness without 
misery^ or life without death is very good 
for school boys and children, but the 
thinker sees that it is a contradiction of 
terms and gives up both. Seek no praise, 
no reward, for anything you do. It is a 
very hard task. No sooner do we do a good 
action than we begin to desire credit for 
it. No sooner do we give money to some 
charity than we want to see our names in 
the papers. Misery must come as the re- 
sult of such desires. The greatest men in 
the world have passed away unknown. The 
Buddhas and the Christs that you see are 
but second degree men in comparison with 
them. Hundreds of them have lived in 
every country, working silently. Silently 
they pass away, and in time their thoughts 
find expression in Buddhas or Christs, and 

the latter become known to us. The highest 

146 



Freedom 

men did not seek to get any name or fame 
from their knowledge. Their whole nature 
shrank from it. They are the pure Satt- 
vikis, who can never make any stir, but 
melt down in love. 

Next in order come men with more 
Rajas, or activity, combative natures, who 
take up the ideas of the perfect ones and 
preach them to the world. These highest 
ones silently collect ideas and the others, 
— the Buddhas and Christs, — go from place 
to place preaching and working. The 
highest men are calm, silent and unknown. 
They are the men who really know the 
power of thought; they are sure that even 
if they go into a cave and close up the door, 
simply think five thoughts and pass away, 
•^■""'TEese five thoughts will live through eter- 
nity. They will penetrate through the 
mountains and cross oceans, and travel 
through the world, and will enter into spme 



c 



Freedom 

brain and raise up some man who will give 
expression to these thoughts. These men 
are too near the Lord to become active and 
fight, working, struggling, preaching, and 
doing good to humanity. The active 
workers, however good, have still a little 
remnant of ignorance. When our nature 
has yet some impurities left, then alone can 
we work. The highest men cannot work. 
" Those whose whole soul is gone into the 
Self, those whose desires are confined in the 
Self, who have become ever associated with 
the Self, for them there is no work." So 
these are the highest of mankind, who can- 
not work; but aside from these, every one 
has to work. But never think that you can 
help the least thing in this universe. You 
can not. You only help yourself in this 
gymnasium of the world. This is the atti-. 
tude of work. If you work in this way; if 

you always remember that it is a privilege 

148 



Freedom 

which has been given you, you will never 
be attached. This world goes on. Millions 
like you and me think we are great people 
in the world, but we die, and in five min- 
utes the world has forgotten us. Give up 
all fruits of work; do good for good's sake; 
then alone will come perfect non-attach- 
ment. The bonds of the heart will break, 
and we shall reap perfect freedom. This is 

the secret of Karma. 

149 



VIII 

THE IDEAL OF KARMA YOGA 

The idea is that we are to reach the same 
goal by different means, and these means 
I generaHze into four — work, love, psychol- 
ogy and knowledge. But you must, at 
the same time, remember that these divis- 
ions are not very marked. Each blends 
into the other, but as the type prevails the 
divisions come. It is not that you cannot 
find a man who has no other faculty ex- 
cepting that of work, or that you cannot 
find men who are more than worshippers 
only, nor men who have more than knowl- 
edge. These divisions are made on account 
of the type or tendency that predominates 

in a man. We have found that, in the end, 

150 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

they all converge and become one, reach- 
ing one goal. All religions and all methods 
of work are going towards that goal. 

First I will try to point out the goal. 
What is the goal of the whole universe? 
Freedom. Everything that we see, feel, 
hear is struggling towards freedom, from 
the atom to the man, from the insentient, 
lifeless particle of matter to the highest hu- 
man existence, the human soul. The whole 
universe is the result of this struggle for 
freedom. In all these combinations every 
particle is trying to fly from the other par- 
ticles, and the others are holding it in 
check. Our earth is trying to fly from the 
sun and the moon from the earth. Every- 
thing has a tendency to infinite dispersion. 
All that we see in this universe, good, bad 
or indifferent, all the work or thought that 
is in this universe, has for its basis this one 
struggle towards freedom; it is under the 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

impulse of this that the saint prays and the 
robber robs. When the hne of action taken 
is not a proper one we call it evil, and when 
the manifestation is proper and high we call 
it good. But the impulse is the same, to 
struggle towards that freedom. The saint 
is oppressed with the idea of his bondage, 
and he wants to get rid of it, so he worships 
God. The thief is oppressed with the idea 
that he does not possess certain things, and 
he wants to get rid of that, to get freedom 
from it, so he steals. Freedom is the one 
goal of all nature, sentient or insentient, 
and, consciously or unconsciously, every- 
thing is struggling towards that. 

We find in every religion the manifesta- 
tion of this struggle towards freedom. It 
is the groundwork of all morality, of un- 
selfishness, which means getting out of the 
idea that I am this little body. When we 

see a man doing good work, helping others, 

152 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

it means that that man will not be con- 
fined within the Hmited circle of '' me and 
mine." There is no limit to this getting 
out. All the great systems of ethics preach 
absolute unselfishness as the goal. Sup- 
posing this absolute unselfishness can be 
reached by a man, what becomes of that 
man? He is no more that little Mr. So- 
and-So; he has acquired infinite expansion. 
That little personality which he had before 
is lost forever; he has become infinite, and 
the attainment of this infinite expansion is 
the goal of all religions and of all teach- 
ings. The personalist, when he hears the 
idea philosophically put, gets frightened. 
At the same time, when he is preaching 
morality, he is preaching the very same 
thing. He puts no limit to the unselfish- 
ness of man. Suppose a man becomes per- 
fectly unselfish under the personalistic sys- 
tem, how are we to distinguish him from 

153 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

others in other systems? He is one with 
the universe, and that is the goal, only the 
poor personalist dares not follow out his 
own premises to their right conclusion. 
Karma Yoga is attaining this goal through 
unselfish work, that freedom which is the 
goal of human nature. Every selfish action, 
therefore, retards our reaching the goal, 
and every unselfish action takes us towards 
the goal; that is why the only definition 
that can be given of moraHty is this — that 
which is selfish is immoral, and that which 
is unselfish is moral. 

But, if you come to the details, you will 
find a difiference. For instance, environ- 
ment will make the details different. The 
same action under one set of circumstances 
will be unselfish, and under another set will 
be selfish. So we can give only a general 
definition and leave the details to be 
worked out by the difference in time, place 

154 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

and circumstance. In one country one sort 
of behaviour will be considered moral, and 
in another very immoral, because the cir- 
cumstances differ. We find that the goal 
of all nature is freedom, and that this free- 
dom is only to be attained by perfect un- 
selfishness, and every action, thought, 
word or deed that is unselfish takes us to- 
wards the goal and, as such, is called moral. 
That definition, you will find, will hold 
good for every religion and every system of 
ethics. For instance, you will find different 
ideas of ethics. In some systems they are 
derived from a superior Being, God. If 
you ask why a man shall do this and not do 
that they will answer, Because it is the com- 
mand of God. But whatever be the source 
from which it is derived, their code of ethics 
will have as the one central idea not to 
think of self, to give up self. And yet some 
of them with this high ethical idea are 

155 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

frightened to give up their little personali- 
ties. I would ask the man who would 
cHng to the little personalities to consider 
the case of a man who has become perfectly 
unselfish, who has no thought for himself, 
who does no deed for himself, who speaks 
no word for himself, where then is " him- 
self? " That " himself '' is personal to him 
so long as he thinks, acts and knows for 
himself. If he is only conscious of others, 
of the universe, where is " himself? " It is 
gone forever. 

This Karma Yoga, therefore, is a system 
to attain to freedom through unselfishness, 
by good works. The Karma Yogi need 
not have any doctrine whatever. He may 
not believe in a God, may not ask what his 
soul is or think of any metaphysical specu- 
lation. He has got his special task; he has 
got to work it out himself. Every moment 
of his life must be realization, because he is 

156 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

working out, without a doctrine or theory, 
the very same problem that the Jnani or 
the worshipper speculates upon and formu- 
lates as doctrines. 

Now comes the next question. What is 
this work? What is this doing good to the 
world? Can we do good to the world? In 
an absolute sense, no; in a relative sense, 
yes. No permanent good can be done to 
this world; if it could be it would not be 
this world. We can satisfy the hunger of 
a man for five minutes, and he will be 
hungry again. Every pleasure with which 
we can supply a man can only be momen- 
tary. No one can permanently cure this 
ever-recurring series of pleasure and pain. 
Can any permanent mass of happiness be 
given to the world? No, not even that. In 
the ocean you cannot raise one wave with- 
out making a hollow somewhere else. The 
sum total of the energies in the world is the 

157 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

same throughout, always the same. It can- 
not be increased or decreased. Take the 
history of the human race as we know it to- 
day. The same miseries and the same hap- 
pinesses, the same pleasure and pain, the 
same differences in position; some rich, 
some poor, some high in position, some 
low, some healthy, some unhealthy. You 
find it was just the same with the ancient 
Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, as 
with the Americans to-day. So far as his- 
tory is known it has always been the same; 
yet, at the same time, we find that, run- 
ning along with all these differences of 
pleasure and pain, there has ever been the 
struggle to alleviate it. At every period of 
history there have been thousands of men 
and women who have been struggling to 
smooth the passage of Hfe of others. And 
they have never succeeded. We can only 

play at driving the ball from one place to 

158 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

another. We take pain from the physical 
body, and it goes to the mental body. It 
is Hke that picture in Dante's hell where 
the misers were given a mass of gold. They 
began pushing it up the hill, and again it 
rolled down. Thus this wheel is going on. 
All these talks about a millennium are very 
nice as schoolboys' stories, but no better 
than that. All nations that dream of mil- 
lenniums also think that they will have the 
best of it at that time; this is the wonder- 
fully unselfish idea of this millennium! 

We come to this, that we cannot add 
happiness to this world; similarly, we can- 
not add pain. The sum total of the ener- 
gies displayed will be the same throughout. 
We just push it from this side to the other 
side, and from that side to this, but it will 
remain the same, because it is its very na- 
ture. This ebb and flow, this rising and 
falling, is its very nature; it would be as 

159 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

logical to say we can have life without 
death. It is complete nonsense, because 
the very idea of life is constant death. The 
lamp is constantly burning out, and that 
is its life. If you want Hfe you will have to 
\^ die every moment also. These are only 
different expressions of the same thing, 
looked at from different standpoints; each 
of them is the falling and the rising of the 
same wave, and the two form one link. 
One looks at the " fall " side and becomes 
a pessimist or at the '' rise " side and be- 
comes an optimist. When a boy is going 
to school and his father and mother are 
taking care of him everything seems 
blessed to him; his wants are simple; he is 
a great optimist. But the old man, with his 
experience, has become calmer, and he has 
cooled down. So old nations, with decay 
all around them, are less hopeful than new 

nations. There is a proverb in India: — " A 

1 60 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

thousand years a city and a thousand years 
a forest." This change is going on, and it 
makes people optimists or pessimists ac- 
cording to the side they see. 

The next idea we will take up is the 
idea of equahty. These millennium ideas 
have been great motive powers to work. 
Many reHgions preach this as an element. 
God is coming to rule the universe; there 
will be no difference in conditions. The 
people who preach this are fanatics, and 
fanatics are the sincerest of mankind. 
Christianity was preached just on this 
fanaticism, and that was what made it at- 
tractive to the Greek slaves and the Roman 
slaves. They believed they would have no 
more slavery, plenty to eat and drink, and 
therefore they flocked round the standard. 
Those who preached the idea first were, of 
course, ignorant fanatics, but very sincere. 

In modern times it takes the form of 

i6i 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

equality — equality, liberty and fraternity. 
This is also fanaticism. This equality has 
never been and never can be. How could 
you be equal here? That would be death. 
What makes this world? Lost balance. In 
the primal state, which is called Chaos, 
there is perfect balance. How do all these 
forces come? By struggling, competition, 
conflict. Suppose all these particles of 
matter were held in equilibrium, would 
there be creation? We know from science 
there would not be. Disturb the water, 
and you find every particle of water trying 
to become calm again, one rushing against 
the other, and in this way come all these 
phenomena which you call the universe — 
all things are struggling to get back to the 
state of perfect balance. Then again a dis- 
turbance will come, and this combination 
will go on, making creation. Inequality is 

the very basis of creation. At the same 

162 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

time, the forces struggling to obtain 
equality are as much a necessity of creation 
as those which destroy it. 

Absolute equahty, that which means a 
perfect balance of all the struggHng forces, 
will never be in this world. Before you 
have attained to that state the world will 
have cooled down and become a lump of 
ice, and no one will be here. We find, 
therefore, that all these ideas of millen- 
nium, or absolute equality, are not only 
impossible, but, if we could carry them out, 
they would lead to the day of destruction. 
There is, again, the difference in the brains 
of men. What makes the difference be- 
tween man and man? It is the difference 
in the brain. Nowadays no one but a 
lunatic will say we are all born with the 
same brain power. We have come into 
the world as unequal; we have come as 

greater men or as lesser men, and there is 

163 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

no getting away from that. The American 
Indians were in this country for thousands 
of years, and a few handfuls of your ances- 
tors came. What made all this difference, 
if we are all the same? Why could not the 
Indians have made improvements and built 
cities, why did they only go about hunt- 
ing in the forests all the time, if we are all 
equal? A different sort of brain matter 
came, different bundles of past impressions 
came, and they worked out and manifested 
themselves. Absolute non-differentiation 
is death. So long as this world lasts, this 
differentiation will be, but the millennium 
will come, when the cycle comes to an end. 
Before that equality cannot be. Yet this 
idea is a great motive power. Just as this 
inequality is necessary for creation, so the 
struggle to Hmit it is necessary. If there 
were no differentiation there would be no 

creation; if there were no struggle to be- 

164 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

come free and get back there would be no 
creation; but it is the difference between 
the two forces that makes the motive 
power. There will, therefore, always be 
these motive powers to work. 

This wheel within wheel is terrible me- 
chanism; if we put our hands in, as soon 
as we are caught we are gone. Each one 
of us thinks that when we have done a cer- 
tain duty, we will be at rest, but before we 
have done a part of that, another is wait- 
ing. We are all being dragged along by 
this machine. There are only two ways; 
one is to give up the machine, to let go, and 
stand aside. Give up our desires. That is 
very easy to say, but it is almost impossible 
to do. I do not know whether in twenty 
millions of men one can do that. The 
other way is to plunge into the world and 
learn the secret of work, and that is Kar- 
ma Yoga. Do not fliy from it, but stand 

165 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

inside and know the secret of work. 
Through work we shall come out. Through 
that machinery is the way out. 

We have now seen what this work is. 
To sum up the whole thing, this work goes 
on all the time, and those that beHeve in 
a God will understand it better by think- 
ing that God is not such an incapable per- 
^ son as to require our help. Secondly, this 
universe will go on always. We must re- 
member that our goal is freedom; our goal 
is unselfishness, and that goal is to be 
reached through work, and, therefore, we 
must learn the secret of work. So far we 
have learnt that this work goes on; all such 
ideas as of making this world perfectly 
happy may be good as motive powers, for 
fanatics; such silly ideas may have been 
good in old times, but we must always 
know that, although fanaticism is a very 

good motive power, and does some good 

i66 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

work, at the same time it brings as much 
evil as good. The Karma Yogi asks why 
should you require any motive to work? 
Be beyond motives. '' To work you have 
the right, but not to the fruits thereof." 
Man can train himself to that, says the 
Karma Yogi. When the idea of doing 
good will come into his very being, then 
he will not seek for any motive outside. 
Why shall we do good? Because we like, 
and ask no questions. Do good because it 
is good to do good; he who does good 
work in order to get to heaven binds him- 
self, says the Karma Yogi. Any work that 
is done with a motive, instead of making us 
free, which is the goal, makes one more 
chain for our feet. If we think by such and 
such work we shall get to heaven, we shall 
be attracted to a place called heaven, and 
we shall have to go and see all these 

things; that will be one more bondage. 

167 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

So the only way is to give up all the 
fruits of work; be non-attached. Know 
that this world is not we, or we this world; 
that we are really not the body; that we 
really do not work. We are the Self, eter- 
nally at rest and at peace. Why should we 
be bound by anything? We must not weep; 
there is no weeping for the Soul. We must 
not even weep for sympathy. Only, we 
like that sort of thing, and, in our imagina- 
tion, we think that God is weeping in that 
way on His throne. Such a God would not 
be worth attaining. Why should God weep 
at all? It is a sign of weakness, of bon- 
dage. There should not be a drop of tears. 
How can it be done? It is very good to 
say be perfectly non-attached, but what is 
the way to do it? Every good work we do 
without any ulterior motive, instead of 
forging a chain, will break one of the links 

in our chain. Every good thought that we 

i68 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

send to the world, without thinking of the 
return, will be stored up, and break one 
link in the chain, and make us purer, until 
we become the purest of mortals. Yet it 
seems to be rather quixotic and phil- 
osophical, than practical. I have read 
many arguments against the Gita, and 
many have raised the argument that with- 
out motive you cannot work. They have 
never seen work, except fanaticism, and, 
therefore, speak in that way. 

I will tell you in a few words about one 
man who carried non-attachment into prac- 
tice. That man was Buddha. He is the 
one man who ever carried this into perfect 
practice. All the prophets of the world, ex- 
cept Buddha, had external motive power 
to move them. The prophets of the world, 
with his exception, can be divided into 
two sets, one set who say they are God 

come down on earth, and the other who say 

169 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

they are messengers from God; and both 
draw their impetus from outside, expect 
reward from outside, however spiritual 
may be the language they use. But Buddha 
is the only prophet who said ''I do not 
care to know your various theories about 
God. What is the use of discussing all the 
subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good 
and be good. And this will take you to 
whatever truth there is.'' He was abso- 
lutely without external motive power, and 
what man worked more than he? Show me 
in history one character who went so high 
above all. The whole human race has pro- 
duced but one such character; such high 
philosophy; such sympathy; this great 
philosopher, preaching the highest phil- 
osophy, and yet having sympathy for the 
lowest animals, and never making any 
claims. He is the ideal Karma Yogi, act- 
ing entirely without personal motive, and 

170 



The Ideal of Karma Yoga 

the history of humanity shows him to have 
been the greatest man ever born; beyond 
compare of all others, the greatest combi- 
nation of heart and brain that ever ex- 
isted, the greatest soul-power that was ever 
manifested. He was the first great re- 
former the world ever saw. He was the 
first who dared to say, '' Believe not be- 
cause some old manuscripts are produced, 
believe not because it is your national be- 
Hef, because you have been made to believe 
from your childhood, but reason truth out, 
and after you have analyzed it, then, if you 
find it will do good to one and all, believe 
it, live up to it, and help others to live up 
to it.'^ He works best who works without 
any selfish motive, desiring neither money 
nor anything else, and when a man can do 
that, he, too, will be a Buddha, and out of 
him will come the power to work in such 
a manner as to transform the world. This 

is the very ideal of Karma Yoga. 

171 



BAKER &" TA YLOR CO.'S PUBLICA TIONS. 

BOOKS ON THE 

VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 

RAJA YOGA. — Lectures by Swami Vivekananda, contain- 
ing also Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms, with Commentary, and a 
copious Sanskrit Glossary. The book includes a lecture on 
** Immortality," and the Swami's lectures on BHAKTI YOGA. 
A fine portrait of the author, frontispiece. The whole hand- 
somely bound in cloth, $1.50. 

KARMA YOGA. — Eight lectures on the practical applica- 
tion of the Vedanta Philosophy to the affairs of daily life, 
showing in a clear and forcible manner how it is possible to 
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patible with the humblest occupation, and are open to every 
human being. Cloth, with portrait. New and revised edi- 
tion. $1.00. 

JNANA YOGA {English Addresses), ^Lectures by Swami 
Vivekananda on the more abstract portion of Vedanta Phi- 
losophy, comprising »ome of his finest utterances. These lec- 
tures set forth the philosophy of pure, idealistic Monism in a 
singularly lucid manner. The language is always extremely 
simple, expressing profound metaphysical truths in a way to 
be understood by all. Price $1.50. 

MY MASTER. — This little book gives a brief account of 
Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, who was the spiritual Master 
of Swami Vivekananda and his brother Sannyasins. i2mo, 
cloth. 50 cents. 

Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 

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PRESS NOTICES OF RAJA YOGA. 

The whole spirit of the book is candid in the extreme. It 
appeals to what is best and noblest in ma- It makes no 
foolish mysteries, and demands no blind belief. It puts forth 
its system in a plain and simple manner. It is able to pre- 
sent its own method without in any way attacking the 
method of others. It manifests a charity that it is usual to 
call Chri .ian, but which Vivekananda proves is equally the 
property of the Hindu. If this little book had nothing to 
teach but the beautiful toleration it advocates, it ..ould be 
well worth reading; but many will find in it valuable sug- 
gestions to aid in reaching the higher life. — Arena, March, 
1897. 

This work embraces a series of lectures that fully explain 
the doctrines and principles of the philosophy of the Indian 
monks, wV j have aroi^sed such a widespread interest in this 
country. To the reader who is seeking after the truth and 
light, this volume will be indeed welcome. It is written in 
an unusually clear style that all readers can understand. — 
Bookseller and Newsman. 

How to get at the soul and put the reins of the mind and 
the body into its hands, is the problem that Raja Yoga at- 
tempts to solve, and all those persons who practice Yoga 
are known as Yogis. Then — how to become a Yogi, how to 
rise to a high state of psychic control is what Vivekananda 
endeavors to point out in these lectures. — Literary Digest. 

A large part of the book is occupied with that method of 
attaining perfection known as Raja Yoga, and there are also 
translations of a number of aphorisms and an excellent glos- 
sary. — Living Age, Aug. 5th, 1899. 

A valuable portion of the volume to students is the glos- 
■^sary of Sanskrit technical terms. This includes not only 
such terms as are employed in the book, but also those fre- 
quently employed in works on the Vedanta philosophy in 
general. — New York Times, July 22nd, 1899. 

A new edition, with an enlarged glossary, which will be 
welcomed by students of comparative religion, who are al- 
ready familiar with the author's lectures in this country. — 
Review of Reviews, Oct., 1899. 

The methods of practical realization of the divine within 
the human are applicable to all religions, and all peoples, 
and only vary in their details to suit the idiosyncrasy of race 
and individuals.— Fc?^^ Washington, D. C, June 12th, 1899. 



BAKER ^ TAYLOR CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 



PRESS NOTICES OF RAJA YOGA,— (Continued,) 

This application of an ancient ^ystem of Indian philosophy 
will doubtless be of much interest to those who delve into 
such subjects. — Los Angeles Times, July 2nd, 1899. 

The mental and physical processes are described through 
v/hich man may be brought to a full knowledge in life of the 
secrets of his being.-~5an Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 6th, 1899. 

The work is exceedingly interesting. — Religio-Philosophical 
Journal, San Francisco, Sept. 21st, 1899. 

As a study of Vedanta Philosophy and Raja Yoga it is, 
perhaps, unequalled by any other book in the English lan- 
guage. — The Progressive Thinker, Sept. 26th, 1899. 

With the simplicity of language of a child's primer, and 
the progressive logic of a mathematical proposition, the 
Swami explains the simple working rules of this science. 
. . . The book is charming to any one interested in the sub- 
ject, and an instructive study in logic to even the most in- 
different. — Public Opinion, N. Y., July 27th, 1899. 

You cannot, you must not, fail to study it. It is truth, life, 
peace, joy. We beg all our readers to look into it in the 
most thorough manner. — Occult Truths, Sept., 1899. 

This work is essentially uplifting and breathes in every 
line the divinity of man. It is, of course, the Hindu idealist's 
conception of God, infinity, man, and his relations to the 
whole, and carries throughout the pure and lofty idealism 
of the Hindu philosophy. — Light of Truth, Sept. nth, 1897. 

As an exposition the book is good. It conveys a; definite 
idea of what the aim and end of the Hindu religion is. — 
The Truth Seeker, Nov. nth, 1899. 

That he (Swami Vivekananda) is master of the science of 
Raja Yoga, that contains so much that is mysterious to the 
Western world, there can be no doubt. These lectures give 
a thorough and lucid explanation of it, and contain much 
that Christians must accept as sound and wise. — Bookseller, 
Newsdealer, and Stationer, Aug. ist, 1899. 

Raja Yoga is an ancient system of Indian Philosophy, and 
one of the four chief methods that the Vedanta Philosophy 
offer to obtain freedom and perfection. — Book News, Aug., 

1899. 
The foregoing books mailed postpaid on receipt of the 

price by 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., Publishers, 

5 and 7 East Sixteenth St., New York. 



BAKER <&• TA YLOR CO.'S PUBLICA TIONS. 

Pamphlets on Vedanta Philosophy. 

The following lectures by Swami Vivekananda contain a 
comprehensive statement of the fundamental teachings of Ve- 
danta, and furnish a clear exposition of this Philosophy. 
They are in pamphlet form and will be mailed to any address 
for 10 cents each and i cent postage. 

The Ideal of a Universal Religion,— -setting forth the fun- 
damental principles underlying all religions, in which 
principles those of different faiths can find a basis for har- 
mony, thus promoting toleration and sympathy instead of 
bigotry and hatred. 

The Cosmos, — two lectures giving a survey of the Vedantic 
conception of the Universe and the philosophy upon 
which that conception rests. 

The Atman.-— The "Self" of the Vedanta. A lecture deliv- 
ered before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, explaining 
the most important doctrine of the Vedanta Philosophy. 

The Real and the Apparent Man.— A further elucidation of 
the doctrine of the **Self," or Atman. 

Bhakti Yoga, — which most beautifully expounds the ideal 
held up by Vedanta of a religion of Love for love's sake 
alone, of absolute devotion to the All-Merciful Ruler of 
the Universe. 

LECTURES BY SWAMI ABHEDANANDA: 

The Motherhood of God. 

Scientific Basis of Religion. 

The Relation of Soul to God. 

Cosmic Evolution and its Purpose. 

The Philosophy of Good and Evil. 

The Way to the Blessed Life. 

Why a Hindu is a Vegetarian. 

The Word and the Cross in Ancient India. 

Does the Soul Exist after Death? lo cents each; i 

cent each for postage. 
Reincarnation (3 lectures), 25 cents; 2 cents postage. 

Other lectures by Swami Abhedananda will be published 
during the season of 1900-1901. 

Mailed on receipt of the price and postage by 

Office and Library 

THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, 

102 East Fifty-eighth St., New York. 



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